Hero Harry
by LordsFire
Summary: As Magical England grinds itself through civil war and Magical Europe at large collapses in upon itself, Harry hunts through it all. Dumbledore has disappeared, Lucius Malfoy has publically fallen out with Fudge, and most the population of Hogwarts has fled to America, bringing many families of Muggleborns with them. Sequel to Brutal Harry. Rated for violence/messiness.
1. Prologue

AN: ATTENTION, All readers should read AN's at the start of chapters, they will contain content warnings, update schedule notifications, etc. Further, the timing of the next chapter for this story will partially depend on reader feedback issues discussed in the closing AN of this chapter, so if you wish to see a speedy update, please read it also.

Content Warning: Violence and inferred gore.

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Hero Harry, Prologue.

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_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

Lily Potter hummed with contentment as she sipped her morning cup of coffee, eyes closed as she savored the taste and aroma. One of the things she most appreciated about living in the USA, was that convenient little devices, such as coffee makers, were not incomprehensible devices of obscure function to the magical population. Or, for that matter, electricity. She leaned back in her chair, opening her eyes to look around her small kitchen. It was a modest room, with standard muggle appliances, enough counter space that two people could work about it in a pinch, and a round table with three chairs, one of which she currently occupied.

The rest of the small house she'd been given when she was granted asylum was just as minimalistic as the kitchen; a small combination living/dining room, two small bedrooms, and a single full bathroom rounded the place out. Or at least, that was considered minimalistic by _American_ standards, like every other person who had come over to the Americas with the Hogwarts contingent, Lily hadn't really had much conception of just how _big_ the nation was. Flying over more than a thousand miles without leaving a single nation's airspace, or even crossing _half_ of it, began to make the difference of scale more personal to the Hogwarts refugees.

There was a knock at her door, pulling her out of her morning ruminations, and Lily shook herself slightly, before standing and walking to the door, coffee mug still in hand. She paused just inside the door to slip on her warm fuzzy slippers; she was already wearing wool socks with her sweater and trousers, but it _was_ March in North Dakota, even if it wasn't as far North as Scotland was, and she didn't enjoy cold feet.

When she opened the door and saw who stood on the other side, she was reminded of the things she _least_ appreciated about living in the USA, and her mood immediately soured.

"Ah," She said flatly, staring at the man in the expensive suit on the other side of the door, "The latest representative of the corrupt elements of the Federal justice branch, I take it?"

If the man was put off by her less than friendly introduction, he gave no sign of it.

"This," He said blandly, handing Lily a large, sealed envelope, "Is a court summons regarding the magical construct claiming to be Lily Potter. Said construct will appear at the Grace Valley Courthouse in Grace Valley, Virginia, at eleven thirty on Tuesday the Eighteenth of March for a hearing regarding its legal status."

Lily cast a few detection charms on the envelope discreetly with wandless magic, before taking the envelope from the man and shutting the door in his face. She was careful not to slam it, that would give the impression that she thought he merited enough consideration to be angry with; if the man felt it necessary to go out of his way to _not_ address her as a human being, she did not really feel like humoring him this early in the morning.

Slicing open the envelope with a small cutting charm, she pulled out the legal papers within, and began reviewing them as she returned to her seat in the kitchen. It was, no surprise to her, more or less exactly what the suit had said it was, court summons, regarding _another_ hearing regarding whether or not she legally counted as 'human' or not. What _was_ new, however, was the fact that a specific individual was now bringing suit, one Jordan Costello, a name that seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place. He was claiming that she, or 'it' as the terms of the suit claimed, was an untested and potentially dangerous construct that should be held in quarantine until 'studies' could determine whether or not she was, in fact, a public hazard.

Lily was not amused.

((()))

"Neville," Hannah Abbot growled, "_Why_ is there a lipstick imprint on your left cheek?"

By way of response, Neville turned and glared at Sarah Planter, one of the fifth year Ravenclaws that was amongst the Hogwart's exiles, and was sorely tempted to flip her the bird. After a moment's thought, he did.

"One of the underclassmen got fresh with me," Neville growled, "Crept up on me while I was eating. I don't know _why_ these girls think that _molesting_ me is going to endear them to me. Feel free to spank the little bitch."

Hannah turned and glared at the girl herself, plopping down on the bench that Neville was seated at, placing her own lunch tray beside his, and wrapping her arms possessively around him. She considered, for a long moment, a number of creative hexes for potential use against the younger brunette, and almost decided to leave be, not being of an aggressive temperament.

Then the little chit _smirked _at her.

"Excuse me Neville," She said in a glacial tone of voice, standing up and arranging her skirt as she did so, surreptitiously palming her wand, "I need to go have _words_ with that... _female_."

Neville made careful note that while his girlfriend had not resorted to foul language herself, neither had she scolded _him_ for doing so.

((()))

Draco Malfoy, estranged (and only possible) heir of the Malfoy family decided, for perhaps the thirty-second time in the last year, that anyone who thought Wizards were superior to muggles was an idiot. He still had yet to encounter a single muggle contraption that magic couldn't replicate the effects of, but the thing about muggle machines, was _automation_. Sure, a spell could be used to heat a pan, or chill a cool box, or illuminate a room at night, but all of these things required the Wizard's magic to do. With Muggle appliances, you just plugged them into electricity, switched them on, and they could last for _years_.

Automobiles, Malfoy had first thought, were inferior to brooms, as unlike other muggle inventions, they _did_ require constant attention to manage, and brooms didn't require the user to waste their own magic in order to _fly_. After riding in the vehicles a few times, however, and further thought, he realized that, when it was purely for the purpose of travel, the automobile was arguably superior over anything except for the shortest of distances. It offered a closed environment, with the comforts of heating, cooling, radio, and complete cover and protection from rain, snow, or hail. Not to mention that almost all automobiles could seat at least four (whereas a broom was cramped with two), and had a great deal of cargo capacity. Not even the floo network in England had been able to offer much in the way of cargo capacity.

There were still, of course, many things that magic could do that muggle science could not, such as instantaneous travel via Apparition or Floo, the multiplication of matter via Transfiguration, or transmutation of one substance into another, but there were just as many things that muggle technology could do that magic could not. Draco was certain that with enough spell research and development, something like television could be recreated using magic, but every single unit would have to be hand-crafted and enchanted by a Wizard.

Things like mass production of complex devices, bulk shipping, mass air travel, and more than anything else, _computers_ and their attendant information networks, he could not see magic ever effectively recreating. Again, it all came down to automation; Malfoy just didn't see how magical craftsmen could ever keep up with...

A thought occurred to Malfoy, and he decided that he needed to speak with Granger, post-haste.

((()))

Luna Lovegood was quiet as a mouse as she crept slowly through one of the small forests in the area around her new home, creeping carefully, _oh so carefully_, up on her latest specimen for study. Slowly, she lifted her right hand, advanced it over the other, then placed it silently down between a pair of tree roots, before repeating the process with her left foot, crawling onward at a glacial pace.

Her foe was utterly alien to mammal anatomy; it possessed neither eyes, nor ears, and though it could be said to have a tough hide, she was uncertain as to whether or not it had a sense of touch. Smell and taste, she had no clue about, but that was, after all, the point of furthering study of the specific specimen.

So, Luna crept.

Luna Stalked.

Luna Tracked.

Luna Trailed.

Luna veritably _hunted_.

And then finally, she pounced, flinging herself upon her prey with a wild grin on her face, and wrapping her arms and legs around it.

"I've got you now!" She shouted, "Just wait until I get you into our lab for study!"

Hermione Granger's face slammed into her palms as she listened to Luna crow about her successful capture of an evergreen tree.

((()))

"Not much for thinking, are you?" Ginevra Weasley asked casually, eying the self-confident local boy in front of her up and down.

"Oh?" He said, attempting a charming smile, achieving something more along the lines of smarmy, "What would you mean by that?"

"You just spent the last half of an hour badmouthing 'Purebloods,'" Ginny said with a twinkle in her eye, "Going on and on about what 'wealthy snobs' and 'pretentious jerks' they are. I think you were actually trying to impress me."

The boy opened his mouth, but said nothing; he couldn't quite think of anything _to_ say in response to that.

"Well," Ginny said after dragging out the silence as long as possible to embarrass the young man, "It just so happens that _I_ am a pureblood, and the Weasley family was also rather famous for being the poorest pack of blood-traitors in England."

She then kicked the boy in the shin, and flounced off past him.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Immediately West of Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

'Granger Lab' was not _technically_ an official title, but as the small magical/Materials Engineering facility was essentially run by George Granger, Hermione Granger, and Lily Potter, and Lily's legal status was in question. It was also the only building that required a full-time guard, as whether it was intentional or not, some of the things being worked on in there were _dangerous_. And there was Luna Lovegood's small attached arboretum/menagerie.

Draco Malfoy was on the short list of people permitted access without being screened or an appointment. He found Susan Bones and Daphne Greengrass seated just inside three three-story building's entrance, working on enchanting a pair of evening gowns, he gave them a polite nod as he entered. Susan returned the nod; Daphne gave him a sultry smile.

"Good day, Miss Bones, Miss Greengrass," He said courteously, "Is Miss Granger in?"

"She's in Luna's Arboretum," Susan replied, "They came in with a shrunken tree, roots and all, and Hermione had that _look_ again."

"Thank you for the warning, Miss Bones," Draco said, nodding to the pair of girls again, before heading past the building's atrium, and turning left, towards the airlock on the lab's west wall that separated it from the Arboretum.

The Airlock was not, strictly speaking, _necessary, _but even in North America, between Lily Potter, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, and Draco himself, they possessed more than enough power and precision to make Luna's little demesne a sealed environment without too much trouble.

It had surprised all of the exiles from Magical England when they had discovered that magic was just more _difficult_ in the 'New World,' spells taking more power and concentration to cast than they had in England, or Europe at large. According to studies that Draco (and most of the other exiles) had read, this was due to Europe being more heavily magically-saturated, something that was speculated to be the result of more leylines being present in the 'old' continent. The lesser ambient magic affected more powerful Wizards and Witches to a lesser degree, Draco being one of the less effected due to his rigorous training regimen, but some of the underclassmen had been kicked down to practicing with first-year spells again in order to build their power level to where a simple stunner wouldn't exhaust them.

Draco himself was somewhat fascinated as he watched the heavy aluminum gears that made up the airlocks mechanism work while he turned the crank that moved the outer door. He could transfigure or conjure such things himself, of course (now that he knew what Aluminum _was_), but Hermione had transfigured them to fit together seamlessly on her _first try_, a precision to her spellcasting that Draco had only ever seen in Headmistress McGonagall before Hermione, though he suspected Lily Potter might have possessed before being 'dead' for thirteen years eroded her control to shite.

He finished cranking the outer door open, then moved inside of the airlock and began cranking it shut again, his thoughts, not for the first time, turning to all the things he had learned of magic in the last three years. Draco owed actually _learning_ something from his education as much to Harry Potter as he did to Headmistress McGonagall, and had long since realized that Severus Snape had been the second worst thing for his education, after his parents. With Snape out of the picture, he had been forced to actually deal with the consequences of his actions for the first time, and after almost all of his third year being spent in detention, McGonagall's stern discipline had finally broken through to him.

And as soon as he had realized that the power, and more importantly _utility_, of a person's magic, did not depend upon their blood-status, but what they _did_ with said magic, his entire world changed. In retrospect, the facts had been staring him in the face the entire time; Flitwick was not only not a pureblood, but not purely _human_, Potter was a half-blood, Granger was a muggleborn, and Crabbe and Goyle were purebloods.

Malfoy finished cranking the outer door shut, and began cranking the inner door open.

His entire fourth year had been spent attempting to reform his entire view of the world from the ground up, looking for some sort of foundation to stand on. The first thing he had realized was that he didn't even know what the right questions to ask were; his parents had taught him a way of viewing the world as much by osmosis as by deliberate indoctrination, and their way of thinking had been drummed into him on such a deep level, that he wasn't really aware of all the ways it affected him. Realizing that he had bought into a set of values that was not only a _lie_, but that he had bought into it whole-heartedly and bought it _from_ parents who claimed to love and care about him, had horrified him when he had fully realized it.

Eventually, he had come to two primary questions, ones that he wanted answered before anything else; if a person's birth and blood status didn't define their worth and value, what did? And what difference did and didn't magic make to that? He had spent the Summer after fourth year taking illicit trips into muggle London, to see what it was actually like, and aside from the differences in clothing, he honestly would not have been able to tell a muggle from a wizard walking down the side of the street unless a wizard pulled out his wand.

That had been another shocking realization.

The crank stopped moving in his hand, and Malfoy realized had opened the inner door all the way, and he could smell moist air full of earthy smells wafting into the airlock. He shook off old questions he didn't expect to find definitive answers to any time soon, and stepped into the Arboretum, spotting Hermione, and especially Luna, with little difficulty.

It was hard to miss someone that was being chased around by a tree.

"Miss Granger," Draco said politely, "I take it Luna has added another creature to her menagerie?"

"Yes," Hermione said her voice full of weary patience, "A lesser Treant, this time. How she knew it from a normal tree, I _still_ do not understand."

The bushy-haired brunette shook her head, and turned to face Draco, smiling slightly.

"Morning Draco, what can I do for you?"

"Good Morning, Miss Granger," Draco replied, "I was wondering if you were aware of any method utilizing Runes or Arithmancy to draw on ambient magical energies when one is _not_ directly over a leyline nexus."

"Um," Hermione said, her gaze becoming distant as she began to review her prodigious mental stock of accumulated magical knowledge, "I'm not aware of any _existing_ methods on record, but it's certainly something that sounds like it would be interesting to experiment with," Her attention turned back to Draco, and she looked him in the eye, "Why?"

"I was thinking on the primary differences between the products of muggle Industrialism and Science, and the Wizarding world's magic, and realized that the most substantive one, is automation in manufacturing. As things currently stand, all enchanted items have to be hand-crafted by a Wizard or Witch possessing an extensive set of appropriate skills, requiring tens or hundreds of hours to produce all but the most trivial of enchanted items. I know you've been working with 'coding' with Runes and Arithmancy, and I figured that if we could also develop a way to allow magical energy to be accumulated without the direct involvement of a Wizard or Witch, the primary hurdle would be overcome."

"Draco," Hermione said happily, her smile reminding him unnervingly of her uncle George, "You are absolutely brilliant."

((()))

_London, March, 1997_

Seras was seriously considering moving out of London. Keeping up with the steep rent prices in Britain's capital had been hard enough already in the year since her father had died (her mother having disappeared so long ago Seras couldn't really remember her), but the increasingly frequent reports of gang violence had been unnerving her. It wasn't like she lived in a particularly nice neighbourhood, anyways, and she knew all too well that a girl of seventeen, with her well-developed figure, would be a particularly enticing target to roving groups of punks, but she could hardly afford the rent to live in a 'safer' part of the city.

Which was part of why she generally spent as much time out of her 'home' part of town as she could, mostly by requesting as many hours as she legally could at the small tea shop and bakery she worked at. It was one of the few things her father had 'left' for her, and was currently the one she treasured the most; she knew from personal experience just how hard it was for a seventeen year old orphan, especially one her age, to find a job, and one with a boss like Mr. Whitaker was to be treasured, even if she had no particular interest in being a waitress.

"'Morning, Seras," Avery Whitaker, a stout, slightly balding man with a modest gut appropriate to a baker who enjoyed his own confections, called as the young blonde entered his modest shop.

"'Morning Boss," Seras said, smiling at the man as she took off her raincoat before moving around behind the counter, hanging her coat on the small coat-rack just outside the kitchen, and picking up the apron with 'Seras' stitched onto it from the next hook over, "Looks like the rain's clearing up, do you want me to prep the outside tables?"

Whitaker's only had space for four tables and a single wall booth on the inside (and two of the tables only seated two), but as the neighbouring stores in the small commercial strip were a bookstore on the left, and an antique store on the right, both owned by personal friends of Avery Whitaker, a full dozen wrought-iron tables, each with four chairs, were scattered along the broad sidewalk in front of all three stores. The display fronts of all three businesses were arranged to take best advantage of the arrangement, essentially advertising to each other's customers, with the tables arranged so that customers from either of Whitaker's neighbors could examine or enjoy their latest purchases over a danish, a donut, a crumpet, or a cup of tea from the bakery/tea shop.

"Maybe in a bit, luv," Whitaker said, turning his attention back to the tray of scones he was rolling, "First, I need you to pull a tray out of the ovens."

"Sure thing, boss," Seras said with a nod as she finished tying her apron on, then moved around Whitaker to the back of the store, where the ovens stood directly opposite the store front, in clear view of any pedestrians who happened by.

Many more 'modern' shops, especially chain stores, would have considered leaving the work area within the shop exposed to the customer's eyes gauche, but as far as Whitaker was concerned, if he didn't have anything to hide from the customers, there was no reason to do so. And, as he'd told Seras more than once, as soon as he _did_ have something to hide from the customers, it was time for him to shut the bakery down.

Seras began humming softly to herself as she donned a pair of heavy oven mitts, before opening the oven, and removing the tray of pastries. The simple task was the first of many that day, and she did, indeed, end up setting up, and then serving customers at, the wrought-iron tables on the sidewalk. The work was by no means grueling, though her legs did tire from all the standing and walking as the day wore on, and whether it was a 'good' day or a 'bad' day at work was almost entirely determined by the nature of the Whitaker Bakery's patrons of the day.

It was a Tuesday, and Tuesday was usually a mixed day; old Mrs. Salay came by just before lunch for a cup of tea and a chat with Whitaker, the dignified Indian widow wearing a warm jacket with her Sari. It also meant young Joe Roberts came by to make miserable attempts at flirting with her, which was _quite_ aggravating, but at least the fifteen year old wasn't looking at her with eyes that made her feel dirty. Mister O'Malley appeared to have gone and gotten himself drunk again, because there was no sign of him, and none of the other regulars that showed that day really paid her any more attention than necessary to politely place their orders, and then pay.

There was another new young man though, one that Seras rather hoped would become a regular, more because she actually felt Whitaker's was a better place for him to get his tea and donuts than anywhere else in London than anything else. He was young, fourteen or fifteen, Seras thought, with dark hair, brilliant green eyes, and such a serious and intense expression all the time that she'd never quite worked up the courage to ask him why he was always alone, despite the fact that he moved about in a wheelchair, and obviously suffered from some sort of palsy, with how his body kept twitching or going slack every few seconds.

He had been showing up just before dinnertime every day since Friday, and she suspected that he was rather taken with Emily Book, the neighbouring bookstore owner's thirteen year old daughter, judging by how he stole the occasional glances at her. Seras wasn't entirely sure what to think of that, considering just how _serious_ he was all the time, especially since Emily was too buried in reading through her father's stock to have noticed the young man's attentions. In the end, Seras really only paid so much thought to the young man because he tugged at the edges of her memory, and there really wasn't much else for her to do during the dead time where no customers needed serving, and everything that needed cleaning was already clean.

It was during one of these slow moments, that the normal rhythm of Seras work day was broken. It started when a pair of rough-looking men wearing, of all things, _cloaks_, stalked past Whitaker's, and entered the neighboring bookstore, something that struck Seras as odd, seeing as how they did not _look_ like the sort prone to reading for pleasure, but she paid no more mind to it until what came some minutes later.

Seven men in red cloaks strode up the sidewalk, their posture, their bearing, their gait, all screaming arrogance, as though they owned the very street they walked upon, and Seras found herself instinctively retreating into the bakery's interior. There was something _angry_ about those men, and Seras had spent enough time at the police stations her father worked at to recognize men ready to do violence. Her heart seized within her chest when they turned to march into the bookstore.

Then all hell broke loose.

A flash of gray light erupted from the bookstore's entrance, and _sliced the lead redcloak in half_. Blood erupted, spewing everywhere, and Seras vomited, turning away for a moment as she emptied the contents of her stomach onto the sidewalk just outside of the store. For some reason, it seemed very important that she not contaminate the floor of Whitaker's bakery, she was sure it would violate health regulations somewhere. Like having a man's intestines on your shop floor.

Seras snapped out of her moment of half-shock, and turned back towards the bookshop; suddenly aware of the screaming that had begun the moment the first redcloak had died. Bolts of colored energy were slashing back and forth between the six surviving redcloaks and the inside of the bookstore, gouts of flame and water occasionally accompanying them. The redcloaks had overturned two of the bakery's iron tables to take cover behind, though the tables were rapidly being torn apart by the... _whatever_ it was that the men were firing at each other out of _sticks_.

_Wands_, the part of Seras that was still captivated fairy tales and childhood stories informed her silently, and she nodded stupidly in response to her own thoughts. For long moments Seras stared in bewilderment, just barely peeking around the edge of the bakery's doorframe, as the store front of the bookshop was blasted, slashed, burned, and liquefied into oblivion, and the six redcloaks resorted to seizing more tables to cover themselves. It was when they seized their fifth table, that Seras realized that the palsied young man in the wheelchair was still in front of the bakery, utterly exposed.

Until that moment of realization, Seras had not realized that instead of breaking from a half-shock, she had merely broken from full to half, and the world around her snapped into violent clarity. Seras heard the faux-latin shouts, both those from the redcloaks, and those from within the storefront, that the wizards used to announce their spellfire, she could hear the rising crackle of flames taking hold of the books within the store, the faint hiss as the bolts of energy sizzled through the air, all of this over the screams of Londoner pedestrians as they fled the scene. She could taste the blood, smoke, and sweat on the air, her nostrils flaring as she instinctively inhaled to take advantage of her suddenly-quickened senses.

She could see how poor a weapon the spells made, moving at speeds low enough that a skilled athlete, such as herself, could conceivably dodge them, even at ranges of less than ten meters, this not even counting the incredibly obvious telegraphing of each spell before it was launched. She could see how the glass of the storefront, the flesh of the dead redcloak, even the concrete of the sidewalk, all were damaged far more easily than the cast iron tables, tickling her memories of how iron was resistant to magic in so much folklore. She could see how the crippled young man trembled in his wheelchair, his body still twitching randomly from whatever neural disorder afflicted him, while he watched the other Londoners and tourists desperately running as swiftly as they could, leaving him alone in the increasingly deserted street.

But more than anything else, Seras saw someone in need of saving. Ever since she had truly understood just what her father had done as a Special Firearms Officer, ever since she had been saved from a bully when she was ten years old, she had been set on joining the police herself, because she wanted to _protect_ people.

Seras burst out of the doorway, accelerating into a sprint in the handful of meters between her and the boy's wheelchair that would have raised eyebrows amongst any except for professional athletes. It took her less than five seconds to reach her objective, her eyes on the firefight scarcely ten meters away as two year's familiarity with the table's layout allowed her to navigate purely by instinct. As she ran, she cursed the Blair government's restrictive laws on firearms, having lost her father's old firearms after any handgun with any real _stopping_ power was banned in February. It was readily obvious to her, especially as a particularly vivid purple jet of energy blasted a watermelon-sized hole into the concrete sidewalk, that while the magic-user's spells were pathetically easy to avoid, the stopping power they possessed was functionally absolute.

And she herself was completely unarmed.

Fortunately, her purpose there and then wasn't to stop the fight in progress, so when she reached her target's wheelchair, she slammed into its back, scarcely slowing down as she seized its handles and sought to whisk its occupant out of the danger zone as swiftly as possible. Her burgeoning combat awareness and calculation was brought to a sudden, screeching halt, when the wheelchair's owner seized the wheels and brought it to an abrupt, screeching halt, stunning Seras not only with his apparently suicidal actions, but with how easily he was able to overpower her.

"What are you doing?" Seras shouted, "You'll get killed out here!"

"R-run, miss," The boy said, his slight stutter not detracting in the least from the force in his voice, "Don't worry about me."

"What?" Seras burst out, completely bewildered by the boy's response, her mind scrabbling at any possible reason for such a reaction, "Look, just because you're stuck in a wheelchair-"

"_Fine then_," The boy's voice shifted from forceful, to hard and cold as iron, "If you'll not leave, then stay behind me and _watch_."

Seras stuttered for a moment in shock at the demanding response the boy (_no, _Seras thought to herself, _young man), _threw at her, but before she could even begin to respond, one of the redcloaks, attention drawn by their argument, turned their way.

For a frozen, horrified second, Seras locked gazes with the man. His face was clean-shaven and his hair was clearly well-groomed, though sweat, concrete dust, and blood, were smeared across his face. It was the eyes though, and the sneering disdain in them, that stood out most in Seras mind, and memory, from that day on.

Then the man looked down from her, to the wheelchair's occupant, and his face paled in terror.

"IT'S POTTER!" The man screamed, hurling himself back and away, a spell flashing from his wand towards Seras' would-be rescuee.

All activity, both within and without the storefront, came to a deafeningly silent halt, the young man in front of Seras deflecting the orange spell sent his way with an idle flick of his right hand, then extinguished the fire growing in the bookstore with his left.

"I will give you this opportunity once, and _only_ once," Potter said with calm force, "Leave, _now_. And the girl does not go with _either_ of you."

For a long moment, acted, spoke, or even moved, in the battered London street, though Seras could faintly hear Whitaker whispering into the telephone in his shop. Then one of the redcloaks stood, and Seras could visibly _see_ him gather a blustering, self-important attitude around himself.

"Harry James Potter," He declared, stepping forward towards Seras and Potter, "By the authority vested in me as an Auror by the Ministry of Magic, I hereby place you under arrest-"

He was cut off when a sword was thrust into his neck, slicing clean through and decapitating him messily as his blood pressure abruptly equalized by venting through his neck. Before the man's head even hit the ground, spellfire erupted again, the five surviving redcloaks desperately ducking behind the tables as they pelted their wheelchair-bound opponent with brilliant jets of light. Seras instinctively ducked back and away, trying to pull the wheelchair with her, but it was utterly unmoved, as though it had taken root in the concrete.

A shimmering dome of translucent light sprang to life around the Potter and Seras, and the spells splashed harmlessly against the shield.

"Idiots," Harry spat, "They could have lived through this."

With a gesture from his now wand-filled, hand, he summoned a broad assortment of concrete shards to float in front of him, the detritus of spell damage to the sidewalk varying in from coin sized to fist sized. One of the redcloaks popped out from behind a table, and began bringing his wand to bear.

"Avada-" He began, but was cut off by a finger-sized lump of concrete putting a fist-sized hole through his head.

Then Harry went on the offensive, and Seras nearly vomited in horror. She was uncertain if what he was doing should properly be called telekinesis or not, but the way he used it allowed none of the weaknesses that the other magician's styles of combat suffered, something Seras was painfully aware of, even as she was terrified by its effects.

The young Potter propelled the stones away from himself at hypersonic velocities, the lumps of concrete moving so fast that they punched glowing-hot holes through the iron tables that the redcloaks had been taking cover behind, launching them in sequence at a rate comparable to a high end automatic firearm. Seras could not see the bodies directly, something she was thankful for, but she could see the blood and viscera the hyperkinetic weapons spewed across the street behind the tables.

Later, after post-combat hysteria had died down, she would also recognize that Potter had directed the angle of fire _downward_, ensuring that the projectiles would not accidentally cause over-penetration kills against unintended targets.

"Loyalist!" Harry barked, "I know Moody's ordered you not to fight with me. Leave the girl and go."

"We don't answer to you, Potter!" Shouted a man from within the storefront, without revealing his position.

"No," Potter replied, "But you know you can't beat me either. Leave, or I'll do you the same as Fudge's thugs."

An angry snarl emerged from the shop, followed shortly by the two rough men Seras had seen enter the bookstore earlier, one of them looking like he'd lost some hair to the fire, the other clinging tightly to a mangled right arm with his left. The uninjured man favored Potter with a harsh glare, before guiding his companion away from the pair, the two running about thirty meters down the street, before disappearing with a sharp _crack_.

For a long moment, the street was awkwardly quiet, only the sounds of traffic from out of sight preventing total silence.

"Moody's men might be stubborn fools," Potter grumbled, "But they're not _complete_ idiots."

"What the _hell_ was that?" Seras abruptly burst out, surprised by her own sudden flare of temper, "That sure as hell wasn't just 'gang violence!'"

"No," Harry said harshly, "It wasn't, and unless we _all_ clear this area _fast_, there's going to be thirty to a hundred more of them all over us. We need to leave, _now_."

((()))

"_War is Hell,_"_ -_William Tecumsah Sherman.

End Prologue, Hero Harry.

((()))

Author's Note: Well, here we go again. This is going to be... _interesting_.

First off, for those of you who are interested and care, I'm now published with some of my original material. E-published, anyways; there's a link up on my profile, and the author is _very_ broke. In July, my writing schedule was heavily crippled by computer failure, and I _literally_ spent down to my last dollar (discounting whatever loose change I have) to get a replacement power supply. In other words, if you like my writing, please considering going over to buy some of my posted short stories; they're only a dollar apiece, and authors need money too. In large part to the crap economy in the US (and a lot of the world) right now, I don't have a day job, so what I earn from my writing is it.

Now, on to story stuff. This story is, as is touched on in this prologue, going to deal with ideologies and worldviews. I'm a committed Christian, and my worldview reflects this, meaning what I believe about Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, etc, all come from a Christian perspective. As shown in some scenes of Brutal Harry, Hermione comes from a very Christian family in this continuity, and Lily will have a similar outlook. I do not, however, wish to have straw-man arguments take place between characters, or have no other perspectives presented, especially as when in a story (particularly a fanfic), when a character adopts an ideology, it comes across as the author stating that said ideology is the 'true' ideology.

Make no mistake, I am, as I said, a _committed_ Christian, I genuinely believe that Christianity _is_ true, not my own particular flavor of 'believe whatever works for you.'

However, I want to give people of other ideologies and worldviews a fair showing in the parts of this fic that show ideological conflict/argument, so I'm going to ask for interested readers to PM me, so I can engage them in discussion and debate about worldviews. Ideally I'd like to try to use 's forum function, and I might even try to get some feedback from on the SB Creative Writing forums, so that the debates/discussions can be publicly seen. After that, I'd adapt said discussions debates, and the thoughts and ideas expressed, into the appropriate parts of the story.

Again, I'm doing this out of a desire to give fair showing to those of other faiths or credos; if _nobody_ volunteers for this, I'll try anyways, but it probably won't work as well.

In part due to this, it will be up to a month before the next story update; ideally, I'd like to update in two weeks, and get onto the same chapter every week schedule I kept with Brutal Harry after that, but we'll see. Brutal Harry had about three chapters written before I posted anything, and that initial lead helped me keep a weekly posting schedule. This story does not benefit from that, and it's also likely to be considerably longer, as I will be paying more attention to other characters. On the flip side, I've been writing much more consistently than I was a year and change ago, so we'll see what happens next.

This is also the official end of my author hiatus, even if I'm not ready to post the next chapter of this next Saturday, I will be posting _something_.


	2. Chapter 1

AN: A lot of people have expressed confusion about the time-skip and general shortage of explanation of how things came to be the way they are in the prologue. This isn't the author being forgetful, such things will be revealed as the story goes on, dear reader.

This update comes from sufficient accumulation of writage; I'm not yet prepared to commit to a weekly update schedule, but I _am_ mostly done with the remaining prep-work before I can start writing in full gear, so after the next update, this story should take up either a weekly or biweekly update schedule.

((()))

Hero Harry, Chapter One.

((()))

_Underground, somewhere on Earth, March, 1997_

The room, judging from the interior, could have been anywhere, above or below ground, even aboard an exceptionally stable ship. It had no windows, and the entire interior surface was formed of slightly reflective metal. Roughly ten meters to a side, with a three meter high ceiling, it was half-filled with crates that possessed no visible label, as well as two triple-bunked beds, a compact kitchenette, and a single desk. On the desk sat a computer, its entire exterior, including the mouse, keyboard, and monitor (save for the screen) done in rough black and gray metal. The last things of note within the room, almost more a 'chamber,' of note were a four foot by four foot by four foot stack of gold bars, and the lack of any visible form of exit or entrance.

The room's sole occupant was a snoring house-elf resting on the top of one of the bunk beds. Very, very few humans ever saw a house elf sleeping, for the simple reason that the hyperactive creatures were simply so aggressively helpful that as soon as they sensed the magical presence of a human nearby, unless they were _utterly_ exhausted, they would immediately wake and offer assistance. This particular house-elf, one Dobby, was highly unusual as house-elves went, in more ways than were readily obvious. What _was_ readily obvious, however, was that he was unusually large for a house-elf, nearly four feet tall, and was, to put it simply, _buff_. Unlike the scrawny and somewhat spindly appearance of most house-elves, Dobby looked more like an extremely athletic child, with slightly misproportioned limbs and facial features; if he'd had hair and smaller eyes, he might possibly have been able to pass as human, even amongst Wizards.

A sharp crack woke the sleeping house-elf, and he immediately realized he was no longer alone, five humans having entered the large room.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" Seras shouted, on the verge of hyperventilating as she spun in place, taking in her new surroundings as quickly as she could.

"Teleportation," Harry said shortly, lifting his hands from where they'd been clasped with the other three people he'd brought with him, before climbing shakily out of his wheelchair, "You're in one of m-my safe houses, we'll be safe here while I f-fill you all in on the mess we just left."

"That would be most appreciated, young man," Avery Whitaker said as he took a more restrained survey of the safehouse, one of his eyebrows rising as he caught sight of the stack of gold bars.

"Right," Harry said, leaning on a row of crates for support when his legs occasionally stopped responding to his commands for an instant as he made his way over to the desk, "Dobby, t-tea please."

"Tea, Harry Potter sir," Dobby replied with a nod, drawing the attention of Seras and Whitaker, who had not noticed the small elf in the darker part of the safehouse, atop the bunk bed.

"Who was that?" Seras asked, as she brought herself more under control.

"Dobby," Harry replied as he lowered himself into his desk chair, "Mister Brown, if you and y-your daughter could come over here so I may ch-check you for i-injuries."

The balding bookstore owner nodded faintly, then lifted his trembling daughter and shuffled over to Harry, not entirely steady himself. Harry conjured something that was a cross between a stretcher and an operating table, the surface of the thing being about as high as Harry's waist while seated, and nodded for Brown to put his daughter down on it.

"This may tingle, Miss Brown," Harry said somewhat haltingly, trying to be gentle in tone and not entirely succeeding at it.

He then gestured sharply up and down her body, then upwards, resulting in a translucent colored outline of the girl's trembling body forming above her. A number of places were marked with thin, sharp spikes, while much of her left side and front were discolored.

"Splinters and bruising," Harry said, a hint of relief in his voice, "A-and she's probably in shock, but she'll c-come out of that naturally. S-sorry Miss Brown, but this will h-hurt a bit."

He made another sharp, upward gesture, and the splinters were yanked out of her body; the girl cringed, but nothing more. Harry opened a small pouch on his belt, that had up until he reached for it been concealed by his clothing, and withdrew a tiny vial, which rapidly grew to a more normal size, and offered it to the girl's father.

"I'm shite with healing sp-spells," Harry said, "But this i-is a modest healing potion, it'll deal with the bruises before they finish form-m-ming, and heal up the holes the splinters left be-h-hi-hind. It's best she come out of the shock naturally though."

"Th-thank you," Brown said hesitantly, "I appreciate you taking care of my daughter like this," He hesitated for a moment, before continuing, "But _why?_"

"I-in a m-moment," Harry said, "First, p-please stand up so I can sc-scan you too."

Brown hesitated for a moment, then stood; Harry repeated his diagnostic spell, tweaking it slightly so that the projection shrank a little and rose, so that it was not obscured by the table the man's daughter still lay on.

"Looks like you've bot a few b-bruises," Harry said, "And a couple first deg-gree burns. Here."

Harry passed the man another healing potion, then relaxed back into his chair. Dobby approached with a simple tea service, then summoned a table and three chairs for the rest of the safehouse's occupants. A couple minutes passed as Seras and Whitaker joined them, and Brown helped his still-trembling daughter down the somewhat foul-tasting healing potion, then did so himself.

"Now," Harry said as he levitated his tea cup up to where he could drink from it, "Wh-where would you all like for me to start?"

Seras bit back the urge to shoot off the first words that came to mind, and looked to Whitaker for guidance.

"A good start," Whitaker said after a moment, "Would be why those men attacked Mister Brown's shop?"

"They were after the g-girl," Harry said flatly, a harsh look crossing his face as he spoke, "She's got magic in her, and their side of the civil war _hates_ magic-users born to non-magicals, 'mudbloods' they call th-them, they've got some kind of rubbish going on about muggle-borns stealing the magic of purebloods, that being why there's so many sq-squibs l-lately."

"Squibs?" Brown asked hesitantly.

"Ch-children born to m-magical parents with-without magic," Harry explained, "P-probably a result of i-inbreeding. R-regardless, th-there's basically a c-civil war on in the m-magical community, a-and it's being fought over ch-children like y-your daughter."

"An entire war based around kidnapping?" Whitaker said, torn between displeasure and disbelief.

"N-not exactly," Harry said, "Th-the war is over the same thing wars always are, ch-change to the status quo, w-with the population explosion a-around World War II, a-as m-modern medicine became p-pervas-sive throughout modern nations, more m-muggle-born children b-began to enter the m-magical community, and there've been two wars within magical Britain s-since, c-cutting down heavily on th-the pureblood's numbers. The first war was roughly coterminous to World War II, the second was in the late seventies, ending i-in nineteen eighty-o-one. I-in the second one, a lot of purebloods died on b-both sides, b-but when supremacist's leader d-during the second war tried to make a comeback t-two years ago, and I killed h-him and thirty of his surviving followers, the remai-maining supremacists realized that th-they were in danger of being bred o-out of relevance."

Harry paused for a moment, taking a sip from his levitated cup of coffee before continuing.

"Things started g-getting u-ugly th-then, but it really d-didn't get going until D-dumbledore, the biggest p-political player on the side of muggle-born rights disappeared, and Corne-nelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, decided to try to pass 'marriage' laws, which inclu-clu-cluded stipulations that b-basically made them breeding laws. S-since they were mostly aimed at the ch-children of purebloods, attempting to mandate reproduction begin at age fifteen, h-he just ended up alienating a-all of the young w-women, and m-many of the young men.

"M-most of them attended a boarding school up in Scotland, and when a-about ninety pe-percent of the student population fled to Am-america after Fudge tried to imple-plement enforcement by armed forces, th-the remaining p-pureblood supremacists d-didn't even have th-their heirs, m-mostly, anymore."

Harry stopped speaking, releasing the tension that had built as he had forced so many words past the nervous twitch that impeded his speech.

"And I suppose that, the magical government trying to use force on children, and most of the children fleeing, was what turned it into a war?" Whitaker said gently.

Harry nodded between pulls on his cooling cup of tea.

"That's sick," Seras said flatly, "Treating your own children like breeding stock."

"_People_ are sick," Harry replied flatly, "W-with very few exceptions. The h-higher y-you go u-up the power st-structure, th-the more sick people you find, and the more sick they a_-are._"

Seras suddenly went white, her forming response cut off into a choked garble.

"Seras?" Whitaker said, turning to look at the young woman, his voice full of concern.

Seras started to say something several times, but failed to actually force the words out, before finally managing to speak on her fifth attempt.

"I _knew_ I recognized your name," She gasped, "You were the primary victim in the Vernon Dursley case!"

Harry became utterly still, all expression leaving his face.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997_

Ginny Weasley grunted in displeasure as she strode through the pale early morning light, dew lending the earth a dampness just enough to make it cling to her shoes with every step. The Sakakawea Refuge held more refugees than just those from the battle at Hogwarts, and that wasn't even counting the locals. The Hogwarts contingent, the faculty, almost all of the students at the time of evacuation, and the families of many of them, numbered more than five hundred alone, the refugees from some of the Brotherhood of Nod's attacks on magical enclaves in Europe had brought dozens of Spaniards, French, Germans, Austria, as well smaller groups from the low countries.

Ginny had been shocked at the amount of antipathy the mainland Europeans had held towards the English who had come to the refuge, it hadn't even occurred to her that she, and the other Hogwarts exiles, would be held accountable for the mess in Europe at large due to things going to pieces in England first. There was something more to it than just 'Magical England was the first to fall into chaos,' but those Ginny had clashed with either didn't know, or weren't willing to tell her.

She could say, with all honesty, that she had been surprised to discover that there were people who were bigger prats _outside_ of England, than those she had known within. She wasn't entirely sure _why_ she had rather assumed that the greatest of idiots came from England, but she'd been forced to conclude that there were idiots _everywhere_, it simply happened that most people had experience with those from home.

One thing she had actually _enjoyed_ discovering, because of and during the exile, was that _she loved to fight_. Hence her being picked as one of the Hogwarts Prefects, who now spent a great deal more time keeping peace with the other factions, than amongst the Hogwarts students themselves. McGonagall had disciplined her a number of times for being excessively confrontational, but it was only light discipline, as when Ginny _did_ get into a fight, she was very controlled in the degree of force she exerted, and did no more damage than she deemed necessary to her opponents.

_Just like Harry_, She thought to herself as she rounded the northeastern corner of the English division of the refuge, and began walking south along the edge it shared with the section of the camp mostly occupied by Americans.

It had taken a short conversation with Hermione for Ginny to realize _why_ McGonagall kept her as a prefect, despite her tendency towards over-exuberance when it came to dealing with foreigners encroaching on the Hogwarts students; people were _afraid_ of her. Ginny wasn't entirely sure how she felt about being feared, but the other Hogwarts students _respected_ her, and the younger years looked to her for protection.

And _that_ was something that she could live with.

((()))

_Granger Lab, North Dakota, March, 1997_

"Morning, Misses Potter," Hermione said absently as the youthful redhead entered the Ward Design lab/workshop.

"Good Morning, Hermione," Lily said, eying the rune array that Hermione was working on, "That looks like something new."

"It is," Hermione said, looking up with a wry grin on her face, "Draco came by earlier, and reminded me, again, that for all my scholastic learning, I'm still not very good at thinking outside of the box."

"Oh?" Lily half-asked, half-stated.

"It hadn't even occurred to me to try to construct rune arrays and wards to run off of anything except for initial charge," Hermione said, "I suppose having Harry around to ridiculously overpower anything I couldn't handle myself spoiled me a bit."

"And Draco thought of that?" Lily said, raising an eyebrow, "I wouldn't have expected it of him."

"Neither would I," Hermione said, "But it makes sense. He was contemplating the differences between muggle and magical economies, and realized that the primary choke-point in the crafting of enchanted items, is that as things are currently done, _all_ magical artifacts, broomsticks, wands, Wizarding Wireless, the Coolboxes Wizards use in place of refrigerators, all have to be hand-crafted. He asked me about using a Rune array to create an artifact that would tap ambient magic in order to enchant things."

"Mmm," Lily said as she continued reading the array Hermione had created, "You do realize who the best enchanters in your peer group, not to mention the best unconventional thinkers, are?"

"I know," Hermione said with a tired sigh, "But it's so _hard_ to work with the twins for long, they're _distracting_."

"I know, dear," Lily said with an impish grin, "But how do you think it was for me and Remus, working with Sirius and James on anything?"

"Fair enough," Hermione said, grimacing slightly in distaste, "They're not annoying on _purpose_, or at least I don't think so, it's just..."

"Their creative process is so much more _lively_ than yours?"

"_Exactly_," Hermione said, "At least Uncle George is more... _restrained_ while he's actually _working_."

"What do you think Harry would say?" Lily asked as she pulled up a stool and sat beside the much younger Hermione.

"Harry?" Hermione said, stopping her carving for a minute to look up at Lily, "He wouldn't say much of anything."

"And if he was thinking of your R and D work as a survival skill rather than 'something that someone else does'?" Lily pressed.

Hermione sighed again, then leaned back, twisting on her own stool to stretch her back out.

"He'd say that if I can't do it whenever its needed," She said reluctantly, "Rather than when its easy, it'll get me killed."

"Exactly," Lily said with a gentle smile, nodding in affirmation, "And with what you're working on-"

"It might be _Harry's_ life," Hermione cut in, frustration in her voice, "I _miss_ him."

"It's Thursday, Hermione," Lily said, her smile turning more mischievous, "You'll get to see him again in two days."

"I _still_ don't like all this separation," Hermione grumbled.

"Neither do I," Lily said, laying a hand on Hermione's shoulder, "And if I thought that there was any real, credible threat to my son's safety back in Europe, I'd not let things remain as they are, but until the war is over, at least, or the Department of Magic stops being stupid, Harry's not likely to be willing to accept any alternatives that either of us would agree to."

"I know," Hermione said sadly, "He'd better not be _late_ though," She added grouchily.

"Oh," Lily said with a laugh, "If there's one thing Harry is, it's _punctual_, and you know it. That reminds me though, I'm going to have to miss out on dinner with your family this Tuesday, I've received another Court Summons."

"_Again?_" Hermione asked incredulously, "What is it this time, more questions about Harry, or the 'homunculous' rubbish?"

"The Homunculous rubbish again, I'm afraid," Lily said, her voice tense with restrained frustration, "At least this time there's a name attached to it."

"Who?" Hermione asked.

"A 'Jordan Costello,'" Lily replied, "Legalese and all, it didn't even say if it was a male or female Jordan, though the name does sound familiar."

"I'll try to look it up the next time I'm in town," Hermione said, "Now, what Runes or Charms do you know that work well with large quantities of energy?"

((()))

_Malfoy Manor, England, March, 1997_

"Lucius!" Narcissa called, "It's dinner time!"

"I'll be just a moment dear!" Lucius Malfoy called back, before turning back to the guest seated in front of his desk, "Will there be anything else you need?"

"Just time, Mister Malfoy," The slightly balding man, dressed in muggle clothing, said respectfully, "The place should be finished by the end of the week."

"Very good, Mister Stone," Malfoy said, nodding respectfully to the man, then standing, "Summon one of the house-elves if you need anything else."

"Of course, Mister Malfoy," Stone said, taking the implied dismissal for what it was, nodding respectfully to Malfoy in return as he stood, then preceded Malfoy out of the blond pureblood's office.

Malfoy himself took a moment to organize the top of his desk, before tucking his chair in behind it, and leaving the office himself, moving to meet with his wife in the kitchens. Once upon a time, his family had always eaten in the formal dining room, a massive chamber designed to seat more than a hundred comfortably, with marble floors and walls, exquisite works of ark upon the walls, and gold and crystal chandeliers providing illumination. It had been about as impersonal a setting for a family meal as was possible while within the same room, and Lucius considered this to be part of the reason for his son's choice to abandon him.

Hindsight was a thing both beautiful and terrible, Lucius mused as he strode through Malfoy Manor's elegant hallways; as a muggle philosopher had put it, 'Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,' and once Lucius' eyes had been opened, he had begun to learn a great many things. The first time the Malfoy patriarch had met Harry Potter, he had left wanting to murder the boy; now, Lucius did not think there was a single man alive who had done him a greater service, possibly including his own father siring him upon his mother.

Once a man was willing to see the truth for what it was, not what he wished it to be, many, so much more became possible than had ever been before. Such as the modest, but comfortable homes for refugee muggleborns and their families that were being constructed on the grounds around Malfoy Manor, under their protective wards. Lucius was certain that his father would have strangled him in his sleep if he had known Lucius would bring this about less than a score of years after Abraxas Malfoy's death. As things stood now, Lucius would have been hard pressed to feel anything but amusement at his dead father's old school of thought.

Arriving at the kitchen ended his own train of thought, and he greeted his smiling wife with a smile of his own. The kitchen was a chamber of considerable size, the grandiose aesthetic of the rest of the manor mixing with a more utilitarian motif to create a room that had a _much_ more familial aura to it. Eighteen ovens lined the Eastern wall, flanked by five alcoves for roasting spits on one side, and two dozen ranges on the other, the ranges stacked in two rows, the lower at an appropriate height for house-elves to use, the upper at an appropriate height for a human to use. On the North wall was an array of cupboards where cooking implements, cutlery, and dishes were stored, with a single double door in the wall leading to the manor's impressive larder and expensively-stocked wine cellar. The southern wall was largely occupied by sinks, with an exit to a cloakroom that lead to the outdoors at large positioned opposite the larder door on the northern wall. The western wall contained a double-stack of wall-mounted shelves, two large blackboards for meal plans and directives to be posted on, the service bells by which service could be summoned to various parts of the manor, and the small doors which lead to the house-elves' sleeping chambers. It was the most open wall in the kitchen, and it was near this wall that a modest (by Malfoy standards, it was hand-carved Oak, but contained no gold or silver inlay) table with space for four had been set out, though only two dinner settings were currently laid out.

"How was the meeting with mister Stone, dear?" Narcissa asked as he entered the kitchen.

"It went well," Lucius said, offering his arm to his wife, who slipped her own into his, allowing him to escort her to the table, "We should have housing for another two dozen displaced by the end of the week."

"That's excellent," Narcissa said as Lucius pulled her seat back for her, then slid it into place, before moving around the table to his own position, "I suppose we shall begin enlarging the lunch roster again?"

"Most likely," Lucius said, "Potter was spotted in London yesterday, and that most likely means another round of abductions is being attempted, we'll probably hear from him presently."

((()))

_Materials Engineering Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, March, 1997_

"IT'S HERE!" George Granger shouted gleefully, charging into the Material's Engineering lab with a sealed metal package roughly the size of a football under one arm.

"What's here?" Marie Legrande, his (considerably younger) research partner asked.

"The Tiberium sample I've been trying to get for the last six months," George said excitedly, "Nobody's been able to accurately model its growth patterns or proclivities yet, much less understand _how_ it grows like it does; I'm just itching to study this with magical implements."

"Would you like me to call Hermione in?" Marie asked.

"No need," George said, "She's in the zone on one of her own projects, just call up some of her friends, if you would."

"I'll go see who's loitering in the break room and on watch," Marie said with a nod.

She stood from the computer she had been working at, stretched for a moment, then slipped out of the lab. The Material's Engineering lab was on the second floor, as it dealt with the least potentially hazardous work; the break room was on the same floor for similar reasons. A short trip through the hallway brought her to the break room, where she found the Tracey Davis and Blaise Zabini sitting at one of the small tables, making small talk with the Patil twins while they cooked up something Indian on the small stove.

"Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen," Marie said warmly, "George and I could use some magical assistance with our latest sample to arrive, could I borrow one or two of you?"

"Certainly," Blaise said, standing, then offering Tracey a hand up, which she accepted, "Padma, how much longer until dinner is ready?"

"Another half an hour," One of the twins replied, though Marie couldn't be certain it actually was Padma, "Make sure you bring the researchers with you, and I _will_ be joining you after dinner is finished."

"Of course, of course," Blaise said absent-mindedly as he followed Marie and Tracey back out of the room, allowing the two to lead him to the MEL.

When they reentered the lab, they found that George had placed the capsule within an isolation chamber, a metal and hardened glass construct with a pair of manipulator arms inside, designed to allow for safe manipulation of potentially dangerous samples, and was currently pumping the air out of the chamber.

"Ah," George said after looking up as he heard them enter, "Zabini and Davis, excellent. Be careful, Tiberium has been known to grow into organic matter within minutes of making contact, and inanimate matter in anywhere from minutes to hours, depending on how chemically reactive it is. I've no idea how it'll react to deliberate use of magic, but given its inexplicable properties, I strongly suspect it operates on magic itself, so be careful."

"Right, Doctor Granger," Tracy said, "What do you want us to check for?"

"We'll start with whether or not it actually _is_ magical," George said, "And see how it reacts to your magic acting on it, and go from there. Hopefully, we'll be able to use magic to discern some things that it eating into the test equipment prevented before."

The pump stopped, and a yellow light lit up, indicating that the chamber had become vacuum sealed.

"Let's get going," George said.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, Granger Dental, North Dakota, March, 1997_

"_Uunn."_

"I can relate," David Granger said sympathetically as he worked his dental drill in the unfortunate young man's mouth, "Cavities are no fun for anyone, especially those who got them from ignorance, rather than poor self-discipline."

"_Earuhn?_" The British Wizard with the painfully full mouth asked.

"I _know_," David said with exasperation, "You'd think they'd come up with _some_ kind of better way to deal with tooth decay in a thousand-year-old magical culture."

"_Ahn_," The Wizard replied.

"Exactly," David said, withdrawing his drill for a moment to inspect his work, "Seriously _regrowing teeth_ every time a cavity begins to develop? _Madness_."

((()))

_Materials Engineering Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, March, 1997._

"Well," George said, pausing for a moment to cover his mouth while he burped, _"That_ was different."

"I'll say," Blaise said, eying the noticeably larger shard of green material in the isolation chamber, "I'd say fifteen, twenty percent increase in mass. It drank our magic like it was Giant's Blood."

"Probably a good idea to go for magnetic suspension," Padma said as she circled the isolation chamber, inspecting the crystal from every readily available angle, "If it reacts like that to diagnostic spells, it might change its growth and contamination rate of metals."

"I agree," George said, nodding, "There's an array of electromagnets in storage locker two, if one of you would be kind enough to levitate them out here?"

Tracy silently volunteered, lifting her wand and with a few deft flicks of her wand, had opened the second of three enormous metal storage cabinets that lined the MEL's southern wall. A ring-shaped device, roughly a meter in diameter, with seven electromagnets mounted in equidistant positions around its circumference was levitated out of the locker, across the lab, and into position beneath the isolation chamber. The device was heavy, weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty kilograms, and levitating it smoothly stretched the limits of Tracey's power and control, but like the other Hogwarts refugees, she was stretching her limits on purpose, driving to build her strength.

After all, as they all had learned, weakness invited attack.

"Thank you, Miss Davis," George said, already plugging the machine into a nearby power outlet, and calibrating it for the Tiberium shard's new estimated weight.

((()))

_Underground Safehouse, Earth, March 1997._

"So?" Harry said harshly, leaning forward, his body language suddenly screaming _danger_.

"Ah," Seras said, suddenly flustered, "I was the girl at Little Whinging Primary that you started the whole thing over."

Harry closed his eyes, his jaw clenched, and he leaned back in his chair again. For several long moments, no one spoke.

"You never told me your name," Seras said quietly, "As best I remember, you _wouldn't_ tell me your name."

"T-true enough," Harry said somewhat roughly, before straightening up and opening his eyes, "I H-hope you will forg-give my y-youthful lack of c-courtesy," He continued more evenly.

Seras stared at the young man in front of her in horrified shock, her mouth working as she tried to form thoughts to words, but failed. A gentle hand on her shoulder helped bring her down from her shock, and Whitaker spoke again, lending some calm to the emotionally charged atmosphere.

"I remember that case," Whitaaker said softly, "It was all over the papers for a month. Would you like to talk about it, or rather it be left privately?"

"Privately," Harry said, his tone rather detached, "It is not im-m-mmediately relevant to the understanding you need of the magical world."

"What _do_ we need to understand?" Avery asked.

"Th-there are a f-few options for you n-now," Harry said, "First, what I least a-a-advise, w-would be going back h-home like nothing happened. Wh-which would probably g-get you killed."

He paused for a moment, heating his tea with a gesture, then taking a sip, before speaking again.

"Second, I can drop you off in Puerto Rico, and the Americans will give you as-s-s-sylum. I'd be willing to t-take you to your h-homes to p-pick up m-most of your belongings first, a-and you can most likely d-deal with your b-banks from America by p-post or the Internet.

"Third, I c-can send you to M-moody's men, they w-were the ones fighting to p-protect back at the b-bookstore. They'll protect you, b-but they won't let you leave their st-stronghold until either the war is over, o-or you join the fight.

"F-fourth," Harry continued after taking another sip, "L-lucius Malfoy, a former supremacist, h-has a heavily warded estate in n-northern Britain, which he has o-opened as a r-refuge to muggleborns and th-th-their families. Y-you can come and g-go from their as y-you please, b-but it's not safe off h-his family grounds."

"What would you recommend?" Whitaker asked after a moment of silence.

"S-safest would be A-america," Harry said with a grimace, "I-it's where m-my mother is."

Seras made a confused noise, drawing the attention of the room's other five occupants. She blushed under all the stares, especially Harry's inquisitive one, before managing to speak, albeit hesitantly.

"Ah," She said, "I'm sorry, I had thought you were an orphan."

"I was," Harry said, his tone deadly serious, "But Mum got better."

Seras was not the only one confused by Harry's words, but she _was_ the only one that got the impression somehow that Harry was laughing at her.

"I don't think I'm ready to deal with all of this," Brown said, stress clear in his voice, "I don't suppose my daughter and I could use some of those beds?"

"O-of course," Harry said with a polite nod, "I-I expected to host guests when I s-set this place up."

"I think we should all get some rest then," Avery said, nudging Seras meaningfully, "It's not even nine PM, but it's been a pretty intense evening so far."

"I could use some time to think, if nothing else," Seras said, then dithered a moment before looking up at Harry, "If nothing else, I'm glad I finally got to meet you again. Thank you for protecting me again."

"You're welcome," Harry said, punctuating his words with a grave nod.

((()))

End Chapter One.

((()))

AN: At least one or two readers have expressed a lack of familiarity with Christian ideology; don't worry, any and all ideological discourse within the story will be handled from the ground up, so if I do it right, you could be completely unfamiliar with any and all of the ideologies that come up, and would just end up learning quite a bit, rather than being left confused. I hope to learn a few things from the requested feedback from my readers as well.

For those who've contributed to discussion of ideologies, thank you; I've had quite a glut of responses from Atheists, and am not really in need of any more at this point. Responses from non-Christian/Atheist worldviews would still be greatly appreciated, _especially_ any Hindu's or Buddhists.


	3. Chapter 2

AN: This chapter features the reappearance of George's French research assistant/partner from Brutal Harry, Marie, whose name I temporarily forgot. Derp. Also, I think I've figured out why it's been so hard for me to write this; trying to juggle too many plot threads at once. While it was important to introduce most of the major plot threads in the first couple chapters, so that readers would know what to expect, I'm going to try focusing on one dominant thread, with a couple scenes with Harry, each chapter now. This chapter's dominant thread is Research and Development.

((()))

Hero Harry Chapter 2

((()))

_Materials Engineering Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, April 1997._

"Well, _that's_ another one for the rubbish bin," George said, frustration beginning to edge into his voice, "Make a note, Tiberium reacts with Boron."

"Or eats it, anyways," Padma said wryly, "It's not like it's done any differently with much of anything else."

The two of them were standing around the isolation chamber in the metallurgy lab, going over the results of the latest exposure experiment with the green crystal.

"Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Helium," George said in frustration, "So basically we either risk storing the Tiberium in graphite, or invest in diamonds. I'm not terribly thrilled by either idea, especially the impossibility of finding sufficiently pure diamonds, even synthetic, in any particular quantity."

"Storing it in graphite-lined containers is a reasonable option," Padma interjected soothingly, "Even if it's not ideal."

"Sure, in laboratory conditions,"George said, "But considering that it would have to be _pure_ Carbon structures, the graphite lining would be extremely fragile, and since Tiberium will absorb just about _everything_ into its lattice, all it would take is one accidental drop, and containment could be compromised. Even if it _isn't_, you'd have to check the entire container's integrity just to be certain. It's worse than handling nuclear materials, or biological agents. You can detect the rads if shielding is compromised with radioactives, and biologicals can be kept in triple-sealed chambers, with chemical sniffers. This crap, you won't know it's breached containment 'till you find it growing through your walls."

"It probably really irks the muggle scientists," Padma said, "How it interacts with most noble gasses."

"It irks _me_ how it does," George said flatly, "But at least I know _why_ it can cheat on valence electrons. Bloody magic."

((()))

_Spell Research Lab._

Hermione hummed absently to herself, her conscious mind fully dedicated to its current task, the lab blissfully free of any other human presence (distraction) for the time being, allowing her to _really_ get to work.

Which, specifically, at this moment, was attempting to measure the amount of magic possessed by a gray squirrel. Which was frustratingly difficult; she knew a fair array of spells that detected magic, but roughly half of them only detected active spells, and the other half only registered whether magic was present in the first place. At first, she'd thought any of the four spells would be suitable to her purpose, but when she'd tested them on a few of the Squibs in the Refuge, she'd gotten different results from them, and then on repeated castings, gotten different results with different iterations of the same spells.

It was then that she realized she might also be dealing with a problem of _scale_, there was no magical detection spell that was designed to measure the _quantity _of magic in a being; a few words with Daphne and Tracy had revealed that it was most likely due to such spells being blacklisted by politically powerful, but magically weak, Purebloods over the centuries. The issue remained, however, that she had no reliable means of knowing whether or not common living creatures registered as non-magical because of a lack of magic, or a lack of magic in sufficient quantity to be _measurable_.

Which meant, as with most innovators over the centuries, she needed to develop the tools necessary to push forward her own research, specifically, a spell that would allow her to register not only the _presence_ of magic in an entity, but also its quantity. Which would probably also come in handy for her uncle's work studying Tiberium.

((()))

_Underground Safehouse, Earth, March 1997._

Seras woke after only five hours of sleep; she was young, her mind was unsettled, and the safehouse wasn't quite _entirely_ silent. Considering the part of the city she lived in, being aware of unexpected noises in her living space was a survival instinct.

In this case, her instincts had been triggered by Harry Potter dropping something; more interested in speaking with the Potter than more sleep, Seras wrapped the sturdy blanket she lay beneath around herself, and left the bed. She found Harry glaring at a spilt plate of food, as it silently was lifted off the ground by an invisible force, and the food reconstituted back onto its original carrier.

Seras shivered slightly, at the casual violation of everything she knew about the laws of the natural world.

"Is it too c-cold in here?" Harry asked politely, apparently having sensed her approach without needing to look her way.

"No," Seras said, shaking her head slightly, "It's just, you know, kind of creepy, seeing magic break all the rules so casually."

Silence held for a few moments, Harry silently levitating his dinner to his lap, then taking control of a fork with his magic, pausing before his first bite of potatoes to finally reply.

"Do you r-remember your first experience with m-magic?" He asked.

"Um," Seras said, caught off guard by the question, "...this feels like a trick question."

A short, sharp snort emerged from Harry, and after a moment Seras realized that it had been a _laugh_.

"Perh-ha-aps," Harry stuttered, some mirth in his voice, "Th-though it was not intended as s-such. I meant when I t-teleported you to the school r-roof when we were children."

"Sort of," Seras said, "I wasn't exactly in the best state of mind then, and I think my memory went a bit fuzzy with how we got the roof, trying to make sense of it."

"Probably for the b-best," Harry said quietly, "'Apparition,' as m-most wizards c-call it, isn't much f-fun to inexperienced p-practitioners anyways."

"Apparition?" Seras asked, clearly confused, and beginning to move closer, since Harry still had not turned to face her, "Isn't that some kind of _ghost_?"

"Usually," Harry replied, "It's c-called 'apparating,' when you actually d-_do_ it. I c-called it teleporting b-before I knew m-more people than just me could use m-magic, and still think of it l-like that."

Then Seras came around to Harry's front, and saw his face.

There were tears, trailing down his face, and Seras realized with a start, that he was trembling, and _not _just because of his palsy.

"What's wrong?" She asked, concern in her voice.

"I k-killed seven men yesterday," He said quietly, closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair, but saying nothing more.

Even if he had continued, it was unlikely that Seras would have heard him, as his words tripped her own memory separation, and the previous day's events came crashing down on _her_ as well. Harry wasn't the only one shaking anymore.

After some amount of time, Seras wasn't sure how long, exactly, she gained enough of a hold her horror to focus on the world around her again, and turned her eyes to Harry, looking for some sort of understanding, some sort of _reason_ for what had happened the that day at the bookstore. She didn't want a simple, rational explanation, she wanted something that could touch the fear for her life, the shock at the violence, and the horror at all the _death_, within her heart, though she didn't have the faintest idea of how to articulate it all, or even a clear understanding of what it all _was_ that twisted within her heart and gut.

In Harry's eyes, in his rigid posture, in the tense line of his jaw, she found only harsh iron control, and his own grief; if there was any gentleness for her in him, she couldn't see it.

Seras turned and fled back to her bed.

((()))

_Materials Engineering Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, April 1997._

"Well," Hermione said, eying the shattered, and most importantly, _inert_ mess of green crystal in the isolation chamber, "That was different."

"Not just _different_," George said, grinning manicly as he fondled the sonic emitter that he had just used on the no longer vacuum filled chamber, "It's _eeexcellent_."

"George," Hermione said, some irritation in her voice, "I would have thought you, of all people, would be irritated that a _French_ lab beat you to this discovery."

"Irrelevant!" George proclaimed brightly, "Now that we have a means of neutralizing Tiberium, the _real_ testing can begin."

He paused to take a deep breath, and Hermione, Padma, and Neville all reflexively covered their ears.

"IT'S TIME FOR SCIENCE!" George bellowed, and the Tiberium fragments vibrated before the force of his voice.

((()))

_Materials Engineering Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, May 1997._

"You don't have to be so smug about it, Draco," Padma said flatly, sending a _distinctly_ unamused look the blond's way.

"Smug?" Draco said brightly, _too_ brightly, "What on earth would I have to be _smug_ about?"

Padma just pointed at the lump of distorted Tiberium in the lab's (newly installed) third isolation chamber and intensified her _look_ up to _glare_ status.

"I say," Draco said, his face the very _image_ of surprise, "It would appear that someone has managed to overwhelm this Tiberium shard's absorptive properties with sheer quantity of magic, and shatter the fractal spell structures that make it function!"

"Fractal?" Padma said in disbelief, stepping towards Draco, her voice beginning to rise, "_Fractal?_ Since when do you, Draco _'what is alternating current?'_ Malfoy know what _Fractal_ means?"

She was shouting, and as red in the face as her complexion allowed, by the time she reached Draco, leaning forward to glare up into his face.

"I will have you know, miss Patil," Draco said with excruciating courtesy, "That was nearly _two years_ ago. Might as well have been a hundred, at this point."

"Two years!" Padma snarled, jabbing him in the chest with one finger, "You don't go from being ignorant of all mathematics more complex than basic _Algebra_, to understanding _Fractals_ in _two years!_"

"Perhaps _you _do not," Draco said happily, deftly catching Padma's finger on her third jab, "We all learned things from Potter. The single most important thing that _I_ learned," Draco leaned down, until his eyes were less than half a dozen inches from hers, "Is that you don't let _anyone_ tell you what you are, and are not capable of. That's something I will determine for _myself_."

And then he released her finger, and left the lab.

((()))

_Spell Research Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, April 1997._

Hermione loved Arithmancy, she really did. In odd moments she was working on coming up with more descriptive definitions for the specific subdomains of the field of study; a necessary focus, considering that Arithmancy basically meant 'magic involving math.' It would be a bit like calling all fields of science that used math 'arithmology,' which would have, of course, included all branches of biology, chemistry, physics, etc, etc.

Prior to the implementation of Arithmancy as a discipline in the 1800's, study of magic had been handled much like the study of 'alchemy' by muggle practitioners, little if anything in the way of scientific method, and each group of or individual practitioner hoarding their own secrets regarding spell and potion development. It had taken through to the mid 1800's before any practitioners of 'Wizarding' magic had been able to work through cultural and institutional inertia and entrenchment to even _begin_ to make a unified study of magic via the scientific method, and even that only in the comparatively 'liberal' American magic community.

The primary stonewall they ran into, was that _magic didn't seem to follow rules._ Halfway through developing her own spell to detect and measure magic, she had realized that she should see if any _Americans_ had developed such as spell (though it was really more of an enchantment), and had found, to some personal embarrassment, that they had, more than a hundred years prior. Further research had discovered that the 'spell' was, in fact, a runic array designed to reveal magical activity in the visible spectrum. A very useful application of detection magic, illusionary magic, and runes, in that it required no active casting on the part of observers to use, and better, in the 1960's the circle had been further refined so that the illusions appeared only _outside_ of the ring, preventing the array from spoiling its own effect.

Unfortunately, there was also a critical _downside_ to the array; specifically that it only registered and displayed magic _outside_ of a person, creature, or object's physical form. For a witch like herself or Lily, or a wizard like Neville, Draco, or _Harry_, magic literally rolled off of their being, and even the completely non-magical would be able to sense something odd if Harry got riled enough that his control began to slip, much less a rune array specifically geared towards detection. The problem was, that Squibs, and certain wizards who trained to suppress their magical presence, could stand within a circle, and unless it was _extremely_ precisely crafted and tuned, register as non-magical. A phenomenon which, while it supported her nascent hypothesis that all beings were magical and the only question was _how_, left the problem of either crafting an array precise enough to have essentially zero margin of error, or creating her own spell, circle, or ritual, to detect magic _within_ a being, and measure it meaningfully.

Hermione dearly wished that Lily wasn't so occupied with legal issues; Padma was busy working with Uncle George most of the time, and none of the others really had the academic proclivities necessary to work at her level...

((()))

_Arboretum, Granger Lab, North Dakota, April 1997._

Luna hummed a soft tune to herself as she moved through her Arboretum, tending to the various plants, creatures, and plant-creatures within. Unlike the other researchers using the Granger Lab, Luna's field of study did not involve experimentation, lab reports, or expensive stress-testing and possibly sonic emitters. Instead, her field involved observation of a creature's behavior within its habitat (whether her Arboretum or the wild), field reports, acclimatizing the creatures to contact with things they were not normally familiar with (usually herself), a process that sometimes involved extreme efforts and measures to allow the creature to see that she represented no threat to it. Then it involved learning what the creature required to survive, its preferred forms of shelter and sustenance, and sometimes even outright nurturing a sick or injured creature back to health.

Luna's preferred hobby and profession had _substantially_ influenced the way that she interacted with other sentient beings, not just beasts and plants. One could even say that she had substituted her studies as a zoologist and botanist for her lack of socialization during her formative years, especially after her mother had died, and she had possessed nothing even remotely resembling healthy or normal social interaction.

It was half of what made her so 'loony' to her peers, or, as less malicious individuals put it, 'eccentric.'

((()))

_Materials Engineering Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, April 1997._

"Test analysis complete," George said with a modest hint of satisfaction, "And it looks like we've lost ninety percent of the Silicon."

"What's the conversion mix?" Marie asked, as she leaned over George's shoulder to study the sheet of paper he held, which was occupied primarily by a pie-chart displaying the mixture of elements in the most recently shattered chunk of Tiberium.

Their latest experiments with the pseudo-living crystalline substance had essentially consisted of taking a shard of Tiberium, sticking it in a lump of _something_, and seeing what happened. Or, more specifically, what the Tiberium turned that lump of something into; in this particular case, a lump of Silicon. Tiberium always transmuted any element that it interacted with into something else, and experimentation had begun to show a consistent tendency to change one element primarily into whichever 'useful' element had the nearest atomic number. In the case of Silicon, this had resulted in a great deal of Aluminum, unsurprisingly.

Considering the overall composition of the Earth's crust, it was really no surprise that Tiberium harvesting produced a _lot_ of Aluminum, with Iron and Titanium being substantially less common. Whatever the sample had been comprised of, the conversion invariably resulted in mostly metallic elements forming the crystal's matrix. Once the sample was fully integrated and converted by the Tiberium shard, sonics would be applied to shatter the lattice and render it inert, and the resulting materials tested to see what the transmutation results had been.

"8.6 percent Silicon remaining from this sample," George said, "83.2 percent Aluminum, 6.4 percent Iron, 0.6 percent Titanium, and the rest appears to be _Strontium_. That's different."

"Different," Marie said helpfully, "But _useful_. This only supports my hypothesis that Tiberium is intended to convert the Earth's crust into industrial metals."

"Considering that pure Carbon is pretty much the only solid-phase element that Tiberium _won't_ absorb into its lattice," George replied with no small amount of concern, "And the reports we've been getting of Tiberium-altered life forms, a terraforming tool seems altogether too possible."

"We really need to get one of the mages to substantiate whether or not Draco is right about the Tiberium being controlled by a fractal rune pattern," Marie said, "We need a look at the other side of its operating parameters."

((()))

_Gates of Malfoy Malfoy Manor, England, March 1997._

"Lucius," Harry greeted with exquisite courtesy.

"Harry," Malfoy returned with excruciating cordiality and a respectful nod, his wife mimicking the gesture from beside him, "It's good to see you again."

"As ever," Harry replied, "I am as-yet uncertain as to whether or not it is good to see you. I have here," He gestured to Seras, Whitaker, and the Browns, standing behind him just within the gates of the Malfoy estate, "Four more refugees from Fudge's pogroms. They are as yet uncertain as to whether or not they wish to flee England, and as such, have chosen to seek refuge with you for the time being."

"Of course," Lucius said with a nod, before turning to his wife, "Dear, would you be so good as to escort our new guests to the latest quarters?"

"Certainly, Lucius," Narcissa said, touching her husband on the shoulder, before turning to Seras (who was carefully avoiding Harry's eyes) and the others, and gesturing for them to follow her into the grounds, "Please follow me. I'm Narcissa, and you are?"

Harry, standing utterly silent and still, and Lucius, watching his wife begin to gracefully and efficiently make their new guests feel welcome with a smile, waited until they were out of earshot before turning their attention back to each other.

"You have new information," Harry said shortly, erecting a swift anti-eavesdropping ward with a single gesture from his wand.

"Indeed," Lucius said gravely, "Your latest clash with the Auror corps has provided the last bit of push necessary to convince Cornelius to spend the Galleons for Dragonhide armor."

"That will be a great deal of expense," Harry said flatly, "For very little reward. You know that Dragonhide will provide little protection from me."

"Oh, of that I have no doubt," Lucius said respectfully, "While their repeated lethal encounters with yourself have forced a harsh learning curve upon the Auror corps, they have yet to learn enough to defeat you as you were at fourteen, much less as you are now. Though I _will_ say that I expect a team could have bested you as you were at our first encounter, now."

Harry spent a long moment studying Lucius before nodding carefully.

"The greater impact," Lucius continued after the Potter's acknowledgment, "Will be in their clashes with Moody's men. While their superior skill and tactical acuity have largely allowed them to mitigate their immense numerical disadvantage thus far, Dragonhide armor becoming standard Auror issue, will drastically throw the balance of power against them."

"True enough," Harry said slowly after a moment's thought, "But why do you raise this point with me?"

"To the best of my knowledge," Lucius said calmly, "You prefer the balance of power between the two factions. You hold no personal fondness for Moody and some of his methods, but as long as he is keeping the Ministry busy, and foiling many of their attempts to snatch muggleborns and 'dispose' of their families, _you_ do not have to. If you wish the balance of power to continue as it has, you will need to grant Moody's men a boon to balance Fudge's."

"This is true," Harry said, favoring Lucius with a slow, respectful nod, "Thank you for bringing it to my attention."

"You are welcome," Lucius replied, nodding in return, "Do convey my greetings to Draco next time you see him, as well as my apologies and an offer for him to return."

"I will do so," Harry said, "Though I doubt his response will change. Goodbye, Lucius."

"Goodbye, Mister Potter," Lucius returned.

Harry then turned, strode out of the gates, and once he had passed the Ward limits, silently disappeared.

((()))

_Materials Engineering Lab, Granger Lab, North Dakota, May 1997._

George would only let Draco conduct his own experiments with Tiberium when either Marie or himself were present, so when they were, and he was not busy himself, he made the best of the time available. He was well aware that to many others, sitting outside an isolation chamber and silently attempting to work his magic on what amounted to a magical green rock would have been considered incredibly frustrating, due to its resistance to magic, incredibly boring, due to the repetitive nature of the work, or both.

To Draco, however, it was an intensely engaging process. First of all, the power requirements to work magic on the Tiberium were steep, he had to pump more magic into the crystal than it could absorb, and since it simply _used_ the magic, rather than retained it, Tiberium never hit a saturation point where it could no longer absorb more. Secondly, as it used the magic to either absorb more material, or transmute the material it had absorbed, and in doing so changed its shape, and the rates at which different segments of the crystal absorbed magic. Thirdly, what he was trying to do with magic was enact change upon the crystal as defined by his spell, meaning that he was changing the Tiberium in a third way. And since too much imbalance in the distribution of magic throughout the form of a spell would cause it to fail, he had to constantly correct the flow of magic to retain spell cohesion.

On the whole, he didn't think he could have created a better exercise to develop both his power and his control if he had set out to do so intentionally, at least not one that didn't require the assistance of another Wizard.

So, he sat for hours on end, attempting to change the shape of the green crystal, heat it, cool it, levitate it, anything and everything he could do without shattering it or destroying the magical properties that made it so useful to him in the first place. And on his fourth week of such experimentation and exercise, after he managed to make a particular shard of Tiberium last for three straight days (and twelve hours combined) of magical stress-testing, he was more than a little surprised when it abruptly shifted in hue, and began absorbing his magic at a far, far faster pace.

"Well," He said thoughtfully, staring down at the sharp piece of blue crystal, "Now isn't _that_ interesting?"

((()))

End Chapter 2.

((()))

AN: Hopefully, with this new method of writing, I will be able to accelerate my update schedule for this story to biweekly, but I'm not ready to promise anything more than monthly at this point. It has allowed me to be more productive than I have with writing than I have in a long time, but we'll see. This was shorter than I would have liked, but I'd rather post when I promised I would a thousand words under length, than late and at full length.

Also! I have published my third short story from my own original work on Smashwords as of roughly two weeks ago; link can be found on my profile, indicated by bold text. A little over a month ago, somebody went and bought fifty copies of my second short story all at once; I don't get to know their name from this end, but whoever they are, they have my thanks; not only is it a very clear 'I like your writing, here, take my money,' but I get a larger percentage of the sale price when someone purchases multiple things at once, rather than multiple items in separate transactions.

Finally, my Beta was suffering brain-fuzz when it was time to complete/submit this, so it may have a few more errors than usual.


	4. Chapter 3

AN: I suspect this is the chapter that most of my readerbase has been waiting for; we finally see Harry, Hermione, Lily, and the other Hogwartsians interacting.

((()))

Hero Harry, Chapter 3.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997._

The meeting was scheduled to begin at eleven AM, Harry arrived shortly after Six. Spain had ceded control of Puerto Rico to the United States of America in 1898, as part of the terms of the Treaty of Paris; and created an obtuse legal dilemma regarding the magical community of Peurto Rico. Unlike Cuba, which had never been intended to remain a US possession, and the Philipines, which had a rocky relationship with the USA ending in Independence after World War Two, Puerto Rico (and Guam) possessed magical communities which had never been subdued by Spanish Wizards, and thus did not recognize American authority.

Expansionist and colonialist policies had never been particularly popular in the USA, but whereas the great distances involved and limited technology of the times had allowed certain facets of the Federal Government and certain Flag Officers to pursue their own colonialist agendas, magical transportation and communication had _not_ allowed such within the magical community. Thus, Puerto Rico's magical community had never accepted the implementation of the massive multi-layered warding scheme which protected the continental United States and Hawaii, and the policing of magical affairs remained under the purview of the local shaman, at least once the necromancers amongst them had been purged.

In 1997, this meant that while non-magical Puerto Rico functioned as a psuedo-state under American Law, magicals from the world 'round could come and go as they pleased, the shaman largely unconcerned with what they did, so long as they did not (noticeably) break muggle law. Effectively, this made Puerto Rico the magical smuggling and gray-contract nexus of the Americas, while Guam served a largely similar role in Oceania, South East Asia, and Japan, but there was _very_ little in the way of violent crime in magical Puerto Rico. Explosions, gunshots, and dead bodies drew the attention of non-magical policemen, and that was _bad_ for business, because the shaman knew that while the Department of Magical Affairs might _prefer_ not to take the islands by force, if people started dying, and the full depth of smuggling was discovered, they _would_. And the nominal fees, and availability of certain substances important to shamanistic magic, that the smuggling brought, were not things the shaman wished to do without.

To Harry Potter, this meant that it was the least unsecure option available to meet with his friends and family, without American police or military showing up and trying to seize him, without removing those he was meeting with from the soil of the nation they had been granted asylum within. 'Least secure,' of course, was a far cry from _secure_, and Harry had spent a week setting up for the rendezvous before he had allowed the site to be used by Hermione and his mother the first time. Every time afterward that the site had been used, he had arrived a randomly-chosen number of hours early, and thoroughly investigated, then strengthened, the simple wards he had applied to the area.

Harry was no expert with Wards, he only knew a few simple schemes for detection, and one each for blocking Apparition, Floo, and Portkey travel. He was simply too paranoid to trust any except his mother or Hermione with the defenses, and neither had been available, so he had simply done the best he could by himself; he was no expert with Wards, but he knew a trick or two that had thus far proved universal to all other forms of magic that he had tested them with.

Still, he saw no point in taking unnecessary chances, thus the early arrival and reestablishment of security before the others would begin to arrive. Their 'convention center,' as Hannah Abbot had dubbed it during her first visit, was essentially a moderately large mountain chalet, built some time in the 1800's at the behest of a Spanish nobleman, with the notable oddity of a Sauna, something that was _not_ at all normal either amongst the Spanish, or in the Carribean. After four hours of scouring the property for any sign of tampering or human presence, including overpowered dispells thrown at everything _within_ the Wards, he judged the chalet to be acceptably secure, and summoned Dobby.

Within five minutes, Dobby had scoured the chalet of every particle of dust that had accumulated since his last visit, and ascertained that everything was suitably ordered. In another five minutes, lunch was in the oven, slow-cooking at a pace fit to be complete shortly after the others arrived, and the two settled themselves into the chalet's sun room for a few friendly competitive 'games'. Harry made a point of not playing games with Dobby in front of those he did not trust implicitly; too many things could simply be taken the wrong way.

First, they played the knife game; House Elves had an intrinsic grasp of a number of extremely useful branches of magic, one of them being controlling objects in a manner that was functionally telekinetic. Very few people, magical or none, would react well to watching what appeared to be a fourteen year old boy in a wheelchair attempt to evade two combat knives cutting through the air with no visible means of support, at the direction of a house elf. Those who knew something of Harry's abilities, would recognize that the knives, themselves, presented about as much a threat to Harry as a goldfish; dangerous if he were to choke on them, functionally irrelevant otherwise. To Hermione or Lily, it would have barely drawn a raised eyebrow; it was far from the most extreme training exercise he had put himself, or Dobby, through.

At five minutes to eleven, Harry called a halt to the latest 'game,' in which the two competed for telekinetic control of three rubber balls, each of a different size and mass, attempting to touch each other with one, without allowing themselves to be touched, and sent Dobby to light the chalet's fireplace. Their preparations essentially complete, Harry set himself near the fireplace, his wheelchair facing the fire, wand in hand as he prepared himself for the possibility that someone had been compromised, and he would find himself under attack, rather than in the company of those that he trusted.

Then the first person came through the Floo, and it was Hermione, and everything changed. The tension in Harry's chest eased, his paranoia faded from the forefront of his mind to a background hum, and his worries about her safety were laid to rest.

"Harry," Hermione said with a smile, shaking a bit of soot from her casual clothing before crossing the intervening space and seating herself sideways in his lap, taking his left hand in both of hers, "It's good to see you again. How are you?"

Harry leaned his head against her shoulder, and began to tremble slightly, his eyes closing almost involuntarily as the emotional whiplash of the lastest stint of his lonely sojourn in Europe ending hit.

"K-Killed eight A-aurors this week," He said thickly, tears and emotion beginning to exacerbate his stutter, "They w-were g-going for a l-little girl. W-wouldn't s-s-s-surr-rrend-d-der."

"Oh, Harry," Hermione said gently, sadly, resting her cheek against the top of Harry's head, then wrapping her arms around him, "I wish someone else would deal with this."

The others who had come to this meeting, sharply aware of the private moment happening so close to the Floo, quietly left the kitchen as soon as they arrived, leaving their leaders to each other's comfort and company. For long minutes, Hermione simply held Harry while he trembled and silent tears streamed down his face, his emotional walls still too strong for him to express his grief well. Hermione gently rubbed his back, subtly positioned herself so her hair fell in front of his face, and hummed nothing in particular near his ear, doing everything she could think of to help him feel her presence, to let him know that she was _here_, and he was not alone.

It was something that was painfully common for Hermione, when she met with Harry every month. The civil war in England was _not_ kind to Harry, something that both worried and comforted Hermione. She was well aware that those who held massively greater amounts of power or authority over their peers very often became corrupt; Harry's continued intense emotional reaction to all the death he saw, not to mention brought himself, was a strong indicator that he wasn't succumbing to megalomania.

Then Lily came through the Floo, as usual she was the last to arrive, and immediately moved to join Hermione in embracing her son.

"Hello Harry," She said softly, "Let's get you somewhere more comfortable."

((()))

"Looked a bit worse than last time," Susan said a little bluntly, as they moved out onto the Chalet's veranda, "Somebody probably died again."

"Susan," Draco said, a hint of sharpness in his voice, "There's a _war_ on. Of course someone died."

"I meant Harry probably had to kill someone again," Susan replied, somewhat defensively as an embarrassed flush edged onto her face, "Of course people are dying. I'm just glad Aunty isn't head of the DMLE anymore."

"Fair enough," Draco replied with a nod, before taking a seat on one of the wickerwork chairs on the veranda.

Neville, Hannah, Parvati, Luna, Daphne, and Blaise had also come this month, Ginny and Tracy had both decided to remain behind as they weren't entirely comfortable around Harry and Hermione lately. The others selected seats of their own, Hannah volunteering Neville's lap for herself, and by common consent, everybody spent a few moments enjoying scenery that was _not_ utterly flat in every direction.

"Is Harry Potter Sir's friends being ready to be eating now?" Dobby asked, stepping out onto the Veranda to address the Hogwarts Exiles.

"I suppose," Neville said, shrugging slightly as he wrapped his arms around Hannah's waist, "What's for Lunch?"

"Meatyloaves and potatoes, Longarms Sir," Dobby replied, "Dobby will go fetch it now," then disappeared with a faint 'pop.'

"Blimey," Susan said, shaking her head, "It still creeps me out a little bit each time I see that elf, realizing just how _big_ he is. For an elf."

"I can tell you," Malfoy said, "He certainly wasn't that large when he was bound to my father. Makes me wonder though, just how many of the Elves at Hogwarts were bound to the castle, and how many to Dumbledore, back before McGonagall took over?"

"You know," Daphne said, pausing for a moment as Dobby reappeared and handed her a plate with two thick slices of meatloaf and a baked potatoe aon it, "There's no definitive connection between Dobby's growth spurt, and Harry being an exceedingly powerful wizard."

"Entirely true, Miss Greengrass," Malfoy said, slipping into his 'exquisitely polite' tone of voice that almost always meant he was teasing, "However, there is very little else in the way of potential probable cause."

"That we're aware of," Daphne cautioned, "What else could it be?"

"Dobby," Luna asked as the robust House-elf appeared in front of her with another plate of food, "Do you know why you're half a foot bigger and more muscular than other House-elves?"

"Oh, certainly miss Loveygoods!" Dobby said excitedly, "It's because Harry Potter Sir's magicses was trying to make him grow, so Dobby did too!"

"What?!" Parvati burst out, "What do-"

Dobby disappeared again before she could ask her question.

"Best let him finish serving us lunch before you try to ask, Parv," Hannah said, "You'll just frustrate yourself otherwise."

Silence largely reigned amongst the Hogwarts exiles over the next few moments, more words being spent on thanking Dobby for their meal, than on anything else; once they had all been served, Dobby disappeared again, and, unfortunately, did not _re_-appear.

"Well," Draco said lazily before digging into his meatloaf, "One would suppose that he's gone to attend to the Potters."

"And Granger," Daphne added, "You know Lily and Harry will try to force her to overeat, considering her tendency to miss meals when nobody's keeping an eye on her during research."

"She's as much a Potter as a Granger at this point," Draco said with a negligent wave, "It's a good thing they'll have Lily and Dobby to cook for them, as last time I checked, neither of them were any good in the kitchen."

"And _you_ would know about being good in the kitchen?" Blaise asked, raising an eyebrow, "Mister 'I grew up with servants to wait on my servants'?"

"How to cook myself?" Draco replied coolly, raising an eyebrow in return, "Heavens no. How to tell whether or not the cook is competent, of _course_. My mother would hardly have tolerated my not having a discerning palette."

"_Boys_," Parvati huffed, "You know, there's more to a relationship than who's cooking dinner."

"I think," Neville said, giving Hannah a squeeze, "That in Harry and Hermione's case, dinner will largely be the _last_ thing on their minds. Which is why Draco brought up Lily and Dobby."

"Ehhh," Parvati said, slightly embarassed that she'd missed the whole point of the conversation, "Fair enough."

Conversation after this largely consisted of small talk, waiting for their host to finish his reunion with his mother and closest friend and join them.

((()))

"Thank you," Harry said quietly, as Lily wiped the tears from his face gently with a overly-fluffy towel.

"You're quite welcome Harry," Lily said with a gentle smile, "I've told you before, but I spent many years wanting to do this for you."

"I can understand why," Hermione said softly, giving Harry a comforting squeeze, "Do you want to talk about it in more detail?"

There positions had shifted; Hermione was now seated in one of the simple wooden chairs from the kitchen table, with Harry in _her_ lap (he had caught up on some of his lost growth in the last few years, but she was still taller than him), while Lily puttered about the kitchen.

"Not really," Harry said, before catching a _look_ from his mother, "A-apparently it isn't entirely voluntary though."

"I believe we've been over this before dear," Lily said as she loaded three plates down with dinner.

"'It's not h-healthy to isolate oneself,'" Harry said quietly.

Hermione and Lily both nodded, Hermione giving Harry another squeeze.

"V-very well then," Harry said, "I was having t-tea at Avery Whitaker's bakery..."

It took a fair bit of time for Harry to recount the tale, especially with Lily and Hermione taking turns pushing food on him, and he did so in a largely detached manner, but both of the young women knew him well enough to pick up on subtler emotional cues that even Harry couldn't completely suppress. By the time he reached the end of the firefight in front of the bookstore, they had already clued into the fact that something beyond the violence and death itself was bothering him.

"...And then I App-parated us all to one of m-my safehouses near London," Harry finished.

Hermione twitched slightly; side-along Apparition with more than one 'passenger' was _supposedly_ impossible, but Hermione had _long_ since learned that what books on magic from Europe said was 'impossible' was more accurately categorized as 'incredibly difficult' or 'has never been done before.' At this point, she had broken almost as many of the 'rules' of magic as Harry himself, but it still irked part of her when someone trampled all over 'facts.' Still, Harry had engaged in multi-person Apparition before, even with her and Lily as his 'passengers,' and more important things were at hand.

"There's something more that's bugging you," Lily said firmly, before taking a bite of potato and giving Harry an '_I'm your mother, you can't fool me_' look.

"The young w-woman fr-from Whitak-ker's," Harry admittedly reluctantly looking away from his mother, "Her name was S-seras, and she was the g-girl I rescued from D-dudley nine years ago."

"Ah," Lily said, leaning back in her chair, "Her. How was she?"

"As-side from w-watching me k-kill, an A-auror team," Harry said roughly, a bit of an edge in his voice, "She was f-fine."

"Which means, not really fine at all," Lily said gently, reaching out to stroke her son's cheek gently, "She reacted poorly, and that hurt you, didn't it?"

"I d-don't know," Harry said flatly, "Sh-she was still _pr-protective_ about me while I ex-explained things to them, but sh-she spoke with me again later that n-night," He paused for a moment, his voice beginning to thicken with emotion, "I was sh-shaking from the l-letdown, a-and s-she l-looked me in the eye."

Hermione set aside her plate and hugged Harry again; Lily reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder.

"What did she do?" Lily asked softly.

"She ran," Harry said, looking away, his face rigid as he tried to suppress any visible sign of the same he felt.

Lily sighed, and closed her eyes, before standing and leaning forward to awkwardly hug her son while he was still wrapped in Hermione's arms.

"If she had been frightened of you right after the fight," Lily said quietly, "That would have been somewhat understandable, death is ugly. But running from you when _you_ were at a vulnerable moment..." Lily shook her head sharply, carefully controlling her anger, "That is even less excusable."

Harry just nodded silently.

((()))

_Minister's office, Ministry of Magic, London, March, 1997._

"Damn that Potter," Fudge snarled, "Damn him to _hell_."

The Minister's office was, unsurprisingly, an opulent affair. The walls were paneled with teak and mahogany, the floor was covered in lush crimson carpet, the Minister's desk was oak with gold trim, his chair was very nearly a throne carved of chestnut set with silver-trimmed purple upholstery. It further boasted a coffee table, couch, and chairs carved from dragonbone, and upholstered with dragonhide; a liquor cabinet with bottles dated from decades to centuries ago rested in one corner, and oak bookshelves inlaid with silver and semi-precious stones held an assortment of impressive (but rarely opened) tomes.

Fudge relished the grandiose luxury, unaware that in contrast, he looked like exactly the portly little man he was, though his subordinates hadn't been rude enough to tell him that before his fallout with Malfoy and subsequent hardening, or courageous enough to tell him since.

"I'm hardly inclined to disagree, Minister," Dolores Umbridge, Fudge's sycophant-in-chief said, "Alastor Moody's treason was bad enough, but at least we know he's doing it out of foolishly mislead ideals. Potter's pointless homicidal rampage _must_ be stopped."

"And I _would_ stop him," Antonin Dolohov, the current head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, said, "If you'd give me the budget and let me spend the manpower!"

"As much as it will strain our ability to fund other, vital projects," Fudge growled, "At this point, it is clear that in the long run, it will cost us more _not_ to commit the necessary funds and manpower to stop Potter once and for all. Dolohov, you'll have your Dragonhide armor, and I'm authorizing up to half of the Auror force to be dedicated to tracking Potter down. _Don't_ screw this up."

"I won't," Dolohov said sharply, then turned and swept out of Fudge's office, fairly bristling with furious energy.

"Umbridge," Fudge barked, "We will need to increase the output of the Acclimation Camps again."

"I will do what I can, Minister," Umbridge said, nodding in acquiescence, "But if mudblood acquisition slows after Dolohov reallocates personnel, it will be difficult."

"Use _whatever_ means necessary," Fudge snarled, leaning forward in his chair to glare at the shorter woman, "We will _need_ more gold to make up for the money lost on an increased Auror and Hitwizard budget."

"Understood, Minister," Umbridge said, nodding deeply to Fudge once more, before turning and leaving herself.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997._

"'lo there Harry," Neville called somewhat awkwardly around Hannah's latest attempt to hand-feed him, "You feeling better?"

Some things, men can almost always communicate intuitively, even men raised as socially blind as Harry Potter; Neville's embarrassment and desperate desire for someone to provide a distraction for Hannah was one of them. A quick glance, however, also revealed that Blaise and Draco, the other two resident males, had elected to enjoy the show, rather than intervene on Neville's behalf, and Harry decided that for now he would do likewise.

"Yes," He said shortly, summoning a pair of chairs for his mother and Hermione as they rolled him out onto the Veranda, "M-much."

"Well then," Susan said, a hint of eagerness in her voice, "Once we're finished with Lunch, let's show you what we've learned, hm?"

((()))

The chalet was set on a fairly respectable property, all the more so considering it had been warded for more than a century to subtly divert those not specifically seeking it from entering. For Harry and the others, the chalet's grounds were mostly irrelevant, save when it came time for training combat; then, the steadily depopulating forest surrounding the chalet, and intimate familiarity with it, became critical. This month, Harry had given them seven minutes to move into the forest and set themselves up before the first exercise, the only restriction being that they were not allowed to begin setting up Wards; any other preparation was fair game.

This time, with Susan present, but the Weasleys and Padma absent, they had decided to opt for an attempt at subterranean defense. Susan had learned a great deal about earth magic from her aunt, and like the others she had spent a _great_ deal of time honing her skills, not to mention pushing her magical strength and endurance, since the battle at Hogwarts. She was one of the more powerful girls, but like most Witches amongst Hogwarts student body, before the battle she had tended more towards fine control rather than raw power, and fully submerging the group to a meaningful depth within sixish minutes was a daunting task for her.

Of course, facing Harry Potter in any kind of fight was a daunting task, period, and one of the first things they had all learned, was that if they were not _constantly_ pushing themselves to their limits against him, defeat was a foregone conclusion. Because Harry _would_ push himself, _all_ of the time, and was already _far_ more powerful and experienced than any of them, possibly all of them put together.

Harry started inside the Chalet, where he couldn't see them; the others started on the Veranda, and once Lily gave the 'start' signal, they sprinted off into the forest. 'Sprinting' into the thick underbrush was _not _something they would have been capable of a year ago, when they were still at Hogwarts; between the incline and the unsteady footing, they would have been more likely to break a leg than manage a quarter mile before exhausting themselves. Now though, they moved not only swiftly, but with little noise; a proper sprint could never be _silent_, but they could have been collectively mistaken for a large animal moving through the brush by someone who couldn't see them.

Just over thirty seconds into the forest, Neville raised a hand, silently signalling for them to stop; eight seconds later, Susan nodded sharply, indicating the location was suitable, and drew her wand, directing her magic into the earth beneath them. She began to murmur the verbal components of the spell, one of many magics passed down through the Bones family that was not a simple, 'fire and forget' spell, but an effect that was both sustained and guided, and each of the Hogwarts Veteran's feet began to sink into the ground. The first time they had done this, some of them had suffered from nerves, but none of them were truly claustrophobic, and painful learning from Harry, combined with deepening bonds of trust between them all, rendered the experience simply another oddity of magic, no different than Floo or Apparition.

"Twenty feet down," Neville whispered silently, "Put us right under one of the trees."

Susan nodded sharply, the response to her team leader's orders instinctive and requiring no part of her conscious mind. Slowly, but smoothly, they sank beneath the ground, all their breath patiently as they descended to the indicated depth, Luna greatly enjoying the odd sensation of 'sinking' through earth as though it were water, including its fluid caress across the surface of her skin. Once Susan's spacial awareness indicated they had reached the designated depth, she halted their progress, then used an overpowered basic 'vanishing' charm to clear some space for the rest of them to work their wands, then silently activating a _lumos_.

"Keep it as tight as possible this time," Neville, his face cast in long shadows from the modest light Susan's wand emitted, ordered quietly, the low voice most likely unnecessary, but a part of the psychology of stealth, "We've no need to learn that he can affect a larger area than we can try to protect once he pierces our shields all over again, and he might be more cautious if we're tightly packed, higher chance of serious injury."

'Serious injury' holding a _very_ different meaning for Wizards when they had a highly skilled magical healer, such as Lily Potter, around to treat injuries.

The others nodded, and immediately set about compressing the earth around them, some of it soil, much of it stone, into a semi-spherical shell around themselves, compressing it for maximized strength. Susan began working Bones family magic on the sphere, strengthening it in ways the others didn't really understand, though Draco was beginning to suspect, and Daphne carved out a small array of runes in the floor of the semi-circle, then empowered them to cause a reaction which would convert Carbon Dioxide into breathable gasses.

"Remember to put as much strength into the base," Neville murmured, nodding towards the stone floor they were all crouched on, "He's just as likely to come up from below; more if he thinks we're getting sloppy with it again."

The next few minutes passed without any further verbal communication; a few hand signals were passed back and forth, but the lion's share of everyone's attention was centered around transforming their little stone igloo into as impenetrable a fortress as possible in the few minutes they had. Susan fortified the stone; Hannah and Blaise conjured titanium slabs and welded them onto the interior of the dome; Draco and Luna, the best at visualization in the group, applied themselves to transmuting the soil outside of their dome into a combination of more stone, and shaped charges designed to function like reactive armor; Neville, Parvati, and Daphne were inscribing focusing runes for purely magical shields at regular intervals on the interior of the dome.

Then a physically tangible pulse of magic washed over them, and they knew that the fight was on.

At first, nothing much changed; they all continued in their pre-selected activities; until Harry actually attacked, further strengthening of their defenses was really their best use of time. Only Draco's attention was redirected, and that was only barely noticeable; instead of further reinforcing the external shell, he had begun attempting to erect the Anti-apparition wards that were the first step to any plan they had been able to formulate to defeat Harry. All of them, however, began to call to mind the shared memory of their fallback point, chosen by Parvati after their last series of exercises, over one of the clearings Harry had created with a ludicrously overpowered cutting hex during that engagement. Then Susan, still attuned to the earth around their bunker, flinched.

"He's here," She whispered swiftly, pointing directly upwards.

Every member of the team except for Draco immediately dropped what they had been doing, and shielded the top of the dome, general purpose one-shield-fits-all defensive charms engineered to diminish, rather than ablate, whatever destructive effect passed through them.

Something massive slammed down onto their barriers, piercing each in turn, before shattering against the heavily-reinforced shell of their hastily-created bunker.

"Sir Isaac Newton," Blaise whispered quietly, "The deadliest son of a bitch on or off this world."

"Break _now_," Neville snapped, and every member of the team Apparated out instantly, abandoning their carefully-laid preparations without a second thought.

The appeared fifty feet above the ground; they had unshrunk brooms and mounted before they fell to thirty, and less than two seconds later Daphne had shifted onto Draco's broom, as the lightest amongst them while Ginny was gone. All of them began flying evasive, moving in patterns drilled for an hour every week day, and four hours on Saturdays, protecting the doubled-up broom while Malfoy restarted the Warding chant.

Seven seconds later, Harry appeared, Apparating in below and behind them, his first wordless spell in flight before they'd detected his silent arrival. It was _far_ from the first time they had seen him Apparate silently though, and he'd used the ability against them _more_ than enough that they had developed _substantially _sharper situational awareness; three shields intercepted the violet spell before it could reach their group.

Now that he had been spotted, however, Harry felt no need to remain silent, and began loosing the heavy-hitting spells, opening with a massive wave of flame that was multiples larger than necessary to engulf their entire formation.

"Break Three!" Neville snapped, and the entire formation Apparated out before the wave of flame reach them, scattering themselves across the Chalet's entire property.

Break Three was an order for total evasion; the Apparition didn't stop with the first jump, each member of the combat team dove into the woods, spiraled through the air, abandoned their brooms for the ground, Apparating and Disapparating whenever they felt that Harry might have managed to get the drop on them, something that they all knew from painful experience could happen at any time.

Harry intentionally broke one of his own primary rules in response 'stay mobile,' in order to follow another rule 'don't follow your foes' expectations,' and attempted to discern a pattern to their movements. None of them had realized yet, that he could sense the use of active magic, or the presence of particularly powerful magical entities, but their mad evasive pattern was an effective countermeasure to it nonetheless. There were too many magical signatures, moving too quickly over too large an area, for him to tell whether or not one of them had hunkered down to try to raise the Wards while the others distracted him.

So, he decided to change the game, and silently Apparated into the little hidey-hole they had spent their prep time creating, then immediately abandoned. He appeared directly in front of Draco Malfoy, who was hunkered down, attempting to raise said Wards. Both of them were surprised by the other's presence; both of them reacted immediately. Unlike Draco, Harry had not simply trained, but walked multiple battlefields, and his instincts and will to act were _far_ more sharply honed than the Malfoy scion's; Draco fell to a stunner before he'd finished raising his wand.

_Well_, thought Harry, _Looks like I wasn't the only one who though to return here to raise the Wards... now how should I play this?_

After a moment's thought, he began to rapidly, _loudly_ recite the psuedo-latin chant that served as part of the spell focus, a small part of his mind maintaining awareness of the continued evasions of his opponents on and above the surface. Ninety seconds later, the Wards were up, and the Apparition came to a screeching halt; he'd deliberately overpowered the wards, there would be no splinching, and _maybe_ one of them would sense _whose_ magic had powered the Wards, rather than simply notice that they had been raised.

Then, he began burrowing his way to the surface, barely needing to spare a thought for his magic, as the lion's share of his attention was devoted to figuring out how best to isolate his scattered foes one at a time, before they could regroup, without giving away his location. He rapidly formulated a brutally simple but effective plan.

For a moment, he considered that it might be too rough for a nonlethal exercise, but his mother's (frequent) past words about respecting the others choices about risking themselves echoed in his mind, and he grit his teeth, then set about it.

((()))

"That was unexpected," Lily murmured quietly from the Chalet's veranda, her metaphysical senses just as aware of the flavor of Harry's magic as her physical sense of taste was the lemonade she was drinking.

"I'll say," Hermione said, her nose wrinkling in distaste, "That much is a bit excessive, but he's probably trying to make a point, I suppose."

"Indeed," Lily said with a knowing smile, "My son does very little without a clear purpose in mind."

((()))

Hannah was just beginning to think they might actually have a chance at victory this time, when a massive force seized her violently, ripped her off her broom, and began dragging her back through the forest towards their attempted bunker. Part of her immediately fell into a panic, but hard-won reflexes kicked in as well, and she twisted around in place, turning to face her new course, and panic was immediately shattered by brutal pragmatism.

There was a tree in her way, a thick tropical thing as wide around as she was; with the speed she was moving at, it could very well kill her. There was no time for an incantation, scarcely enough time to point her wand, much less a proper motion, the need for the tree to simply be _gone_ roared within her, combining with the half-thought of a blasting spell. Her magic blazed through her wand, and the tree shattered, exploding away from her in a hail of splinters.

She ignored the tropical shrapnel; none of it posed a threat to her, the _intent_ of her magic had ensured that, she had no time for things not immediately relevant to survival.

Another tree.

"_Bombarda!"_ She snarled; this time, with the time for an incantation, the blast was even more forceful, and the smaller tree ceased to exist in any way that she cared about. As she rocketed across the property, the upper length of it was falling behind her; her subconscious mind was peripherally aware of the fact, but as it was not germane to the issue of survival at hand, the functionally useless information was filtered out before it reached her conscious mind.

Another tree; another explosion, another, and another, then-_Harry!_

A wave of red magic, the same shade as a stunner swept towards her; she instinctively tried to dispel it, but lacked the power to overcome Harry's magic. The last thing she saw, tinted red through the wall of spell energy before it struck her, was the shorter Wizard turning away, already writing her off as a threat, and begin to cast his next spell.

"_Accio Susa-_"

Darkness.

((()))

"It's over," Lily said, once the last string of toppled trees came to an end, a small satisfied smile on her face, "Harry wins again."

"I'm as happy for him as you are," Hermione said, rolling her eyes without looking up from her latest book, "But you don't need to be so _smug_ about it."

"My son, my right to be smug," Lily said with a sly air of superiority, "Once you marry him, you'll understand what I mean."

Hermione would have _loved_ to have a snappy comeback to that, but was too busy blushing brilliant, flaming red.

((()))

"So," Harry said, the hint of a mile in his voice, "Who can tell me what they did wrong today?"

On the whole, it wasn't the most pleasant thing to wake up to, but Neville, Hannah, and the others were becoming accustomed to his abrupt methodology for debriefing them. They were in the chalet's sitting/living room, each of them having been moved to one of the comfortable couches or armchairs in the room before being roused. Lily and Hermione were also present, seated on a love seat; Lily was re-packing her healer's kit, Hermione was, unsurprisingly, reading.

"Been about thirty times more powerful?" Blaise said wryly, "I'm not really seeing much I could have done to slow you down once we split up."

"It's not what _you_ could have done," Neville said, a hint of rebuke in his voice, "It's what _we_ could have done. We didn't have any means in place for communicating once the Wards went up, and because of that, Harry was able to divide and conquer once they were."

"That was one thing that contributed to your defeat, yes," Harry said evenly, "What else can you tell me?"

"Probably shouldn't have left the Warder without _any_ sort of protection," Draco grumbled, "He nailed me, _hard_."

"But I thought you got the Wards up?" Daphne said, curiosity mixing with confusion in her voice.

"_I _certainly didn't raise them," Draco said irritably, "So I assume it must have been Potter. Decided to pin _us_ in place for a change?"

"Something like that," Harry said, "I decided to raise them myself, in order to pin you all down, just as Draco suggested; I decided to work from your own little hole in the ground, and that's where I caught Draco. Once I had taken him out and raised the Wards, I returned to the surface and started summoning each of you in succession; Neville and Daphne were the only ones who required more than a single stunner to subdue, and none of you took more than two."

"I guess you want us to be better at handling someone suddenly summoning us _through the middle of a bunch of bloody trees_ then?" Hannah asked rather sharply.

"I was actually rather impressed with how you all handled being dragged through the forest," Harry said with a small smile, "I had originally considered not using the tactic, but decided I could chance you all failing to protect yourselves from injury; the results speak for themselves."

"Then what do you think we _should_ have done?" Susan asked pointedly.

"_That_ is the question to ask," Harry said, nodding respectfully to the Bones scion, "There's actually very little to criticize, I think, I'm simply years ahead of you in both developing my magical potential, and in training for high-intensity combat situations, and that's on top of the experience gap. You actually all moved well, coordinated well, and perhaps most importantly of all, you _didn't hesitate_."

"You wanted to see what _we_ thought we had done wrong," Draco said quietly, "You were testing our confidence in ourselves and our abilities."

"Yes," Harry said, nodding sharply, "If your perception of my own abilities is that they're insurmountable, and warping your estimation of your _own_ capabilities, that's a problem."

"How do we tell?" Daphne asked quietly, "Especially when we've _never_ beaten you?"

"That's actually not that difficult," Harry said, his voice turning serious, "Just ask yourself if what you're attempting would be effective against _someone else_. The standards I set to allow you to accompany me are higher than those of any magical law enforcement or military branch in Europe; I simply expect you to perform to a higher standard, because _I_ always expect to fight outnumbered, and even if you, and the others," He nodded vaguely northwards, "Join me, most likely our opponents will simply start sending larger squads," He took a deep breath, and met the eyes of everyone in the room, including Hermione and Lily, before continuing, "_Unless we kill them all._"

"There's only about seventy-five thousand magicals in Wizarding Britain in the first place," Susan said quietly, "How many have died in the fighting so far?"

"I don't think anyone has exact numbers," Harry said quietly, "But at least two thousand. It's the stupidest bloody civil war I've ever heard of. Most people wouldn't have realized it's started, if it weren't for Hogwarts closing down, and most of them seem determined to ignore the fact that their 'lawful government' ordered an attack on school children for not obeying laws dictating their sex lives."

Daphne shivered in her seat; Hermione moved around behind the chair, and hugged the pretty pureblood over the top of it.

"I think that's one thing we're _all_ ready to slice off Fudge's nuts over," Neville said flatly, pulling Hannah from her seat beside him on the couch, into his lap for a good cuddle.

"As is anyone with enough sense to see what's happening, and act on it," Lily said, "There is a _reason_ that Fudge is in power back in Britain, and it is largely due to most people's lack of care or concern about anything that isn't directly in front of them."

"With people like my father being among the few who care enough to involve themselves, and almost never with benign motives," Draco added quietly, turning to face Harry, "I don't suppose you've got any more hints as to what his game is?"

"No," Harry said, shaking his head, "He's extended another invitation for you to return however."

"Refused," Draco said flatly.

"I told him to expect as much," Harry said evenly, "But he did ask, and his conduct thus far _has_ been above reproach, as best as can be seen."

"Believe me," Draco said with a scowl, "He's up to _something_, even if none of us have cottoned on to it yet."

"People can change," Lily cautioned, "You are living proof of this. It doesn't mean _he_ has, but just remember, it isn't _impossible._"

"I know he changed after you defeated Voldemort," Draco said, his tone softening somewhat as he turned to face Lily, "But I don't believe he changed _that_ much, nor do I believe that the Dark Mark was actually mind-affecting."

"I don't entirely buy it either," Lily said, "But unfortunately, there's no way to study them now, and even if we _did_ track down what's left of Riddle, I supremely doubt he would be cooperative with any efforts to understand his works. At least with me."

"C-can't say that I disagree there," Harry said with a wry smile, "B-but we're g-getting off track. Th-there were a few particulars that should b-be brought up, s-such as Hannah, when I s-summoned you, I summoned you f-first because I knew you were more likely t-to try to revive someone else than try to t-take me alone. That actually made you m-more dangerous overall, b-but when you had your o-one chance at f-firing a spell at me, you w-were too defensive, you weren't going to b-be able to disp-spel my stunner, s-so you should have t-tried to at-tack, give your allies a better ch-chance. And as to..."

((()))

Later that night, after most everybody had either gone to bed, or split off to engage in their own pursuits, Harry and Hermione moved out onto the veranda alone, Lily keeping a de-facto watch for interlopers from the sunroom.

"I'm assuming," Hermione said as she pulled one of the veranda lounge-chairs up alongside Harry's wheelchair, "That since you went to speak with Lucius, you used magic to control your body again?"

Harry just nodded, looking away from Hermione.

"How long did you manage to maintain it this time?" Hermione asked.

"A-b-bout five minutes," Harry said, his voice rough with emotion, "Long enough."

Hermione moved up behind Harry and laid a hand on his shoulder, hesitating a moment before reaching forward to wrap him in a hug again.

"I'm making progress," Hermione said softly, "Not as quickly as I'd like, but I am making progress."

Harry nodded jerkily, his muscles tensing with frustration; the occasional slight palsied spasm raising his frustration all the more.

"I'm sorry," Hermione murmured, "I know this is difficult for you, but at least some of this, you need to learn to deal with not always being as in control as you'd like."

"Control of myself is all I have," Harry said harshly, hunching over forward, his entire body taut with repressed emotion, his instinctive magic overriding the damage to his body as his aggravation rose to critical mass, "If I can't hold on to it, I have nothing left."

"You've got me," Hermione said, tightening her hold on Harry's tense shoulders a little.

"That's..." Harry struggled for words, not sure of what to say, and Hermione could practically _feel_ the confusion rolling off of him.

Silence reigned for long minutes, Harry trying to articulate the hunger that lay within his heart, Hermione deliberately ignoring the cramp starting up in her back due to her awkward posture.

"That's not the same kind of thing," Harry eventually said, "You a _very_ good friend for me, but nobody is perfect. If I base my sense of self worth off of how you treat me, then what I am is entirely dependent on what _you_ decide, and I'm not willing to believe that."

"But if you base your sense of self off of your self-control," Hermione said gently after a moment, "You're not perfect either; doesn't that still make your validity circumstantial too?"

A long moment of silence passed.

"I don't know," Harry eventually admitted.

((()))

AN: Part of me really doesn't like leaving a chapter end at this note, but this is very much a moment where the author needs to _step away_ from what _he_ would do in the situation, and let the characters be the characters.

The rest of this first meeting should finish next chapter, along with more detailed happenings with the Fudge administration. Also, while I got this chapter out at a pretty reasonable rate, no promises that it won't be another month before the next one. That's the limit I've set myself for how long I'll let this story wait for an update, but I _do_ have other writing responsibilities. Such as my stories on Smashwords; go buy one, and feed the author, link's on my profile.


	5. Chapter 4

Hero Harry, chapter 4

AN: The Weasleys, are a dysfunctional family. You see it in canon, you'll see it here; I don't believe in either bashing or overglorifying characters (see my treatment of Dumbledore in Brutal Harry), but actions have consequences. This fic explores that.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

_Life_, Ginevra Weasley decided, _hates me._

She really could not come up with any other explanation to her current circumstances; she had just stormed out of the slap-dash half pre-fab, half transfigured glorified oversized _shanty_ her family lived in. As was almost always the case when she stormed out of her family's latest dwelling, it was the result of an argument with her mother, one which the rest of the neigbourhood hadn't overheard solely due to Ron's proficiency with silencing charms.

Apparently, she wasn't even allowed to attempt to improve the condition of her own room; it would be 'a waste of time since we'll be back home soon,' according to her mother. Which she'd been saying for _most of a year_, and Ginny was _not_ buying it. She had learned a _lot_ about magic, working with Neville, Draco, and the other girls in 'The Harem' over the last few years, and one of the things that she had most certainly learned, was that there was _no need_ to be living in squalor. The Burrow had been a bad joke, one she _still_ didn't understand why her parents had been content to live in, they had _magic_.

And there was _very_ little that magic couldn't do, if one took some time, energy, and thought to the problem. Or, as Hermione would put it, there was very little that magic couldn't trick Physics into doing for it; the Burrow could have been a glorified _palace_ by the time Ginny was old enough to remember it, and it would have only taken a few hours of work a week to bring it to such a state. Ginny could have done it _herself_ by this time the year before, and had been planning on asking her parents about it when she returned from Hogwarts at the beginning of the Summer, but then Umbridge and Fudge had happened, and everything had changed.

Someone, an American she vaguely recognized, stepped into her path.

Ginny _glared_ at him.

He was at least eight inches taller than her, and for a moment, drew himself up, trying to loom over her.

Ginny's temper shifted; now she wasn't just angry, she was angry at _him_; his eyes widened at something, and he turned and fled. Ginny growled lowly, then continued to march forcefully through the settlement, heading for the surrounding forest.

It had been almost unreal to Ginny, when she had first started to practice with Harry and the others; Hermione said that part of it was because of cultural blindness, magic had always been a fact of life for her, an assumed thing, a known quantity, whereas for those coming from outside, it was something new to be tested. Ginny was fairly certain that it went beyond that, she couldn't for the life of her figure out why she had never thought to test the limits of magic herself, at least not _before_. It was one thing to know that powerful wizards could do deadly things with magic; it was another to watch Harry tear a dozen men into bloody shreds, splattering bits of them everywhere, with a single _banishing_ charm.

And an entirely different thing to realize _why_, that the red spell that had struck Seamus Finnegan just before Harry went on the offensive had _not_ been a stunner, and had killed the Irish boy.

_Everything_ had changed.

Ginny's thoughts were still wrapped in the unpleasantness of the past when another person stepped in front of her, and when she turned her attention outwards, she found it was another boy, probably American as well judging by his clothes.

Ginny _glared_.

The boy smiled warmly.

"You look like you could use someone to talk to," He said, "Mind if I join you for a walk in the woods?"

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

The forest was silent, or as silent as a forest during the night ever can be, at the least. Combat had not yet begun, but the entire team was still on edge, especially Parvati, who had _unpleasant_ memories of the rubber bullets Harry used in combat training. All eight of them were equipped with night-vision goggles, one of _very_ few advantages they held over Harry, due to the tendency of more sophisticated pieces of technology to short out around him. They were moving as silently as they could (which after better than six months of training with Harry was _damn_ silently) through the forest, hoping to spot Harry before he spotted them.

Hand signals were exchanged, and the group shifted from a North-northeasterly, to a South-southeasterly course, too near the edge of the containment (and sound, light, and notice-warded) zone. Unlike the previous day's exercise, this time around every member of the team was carrying some form of firearm, from Luna's Derringer (_nobody_ knew where she'd gotten it), to Blaise's .50 caliber elephant gun. Most of the team was carrying more 'conventional' weapons, semi-automatic pistols for the girls and assault rifles for the boys, but Blaise had asked for the biggest gun Harry had.

Harry had given Blaise the elephant gun, and a _look_ when the others had expressed doubt that the weapon was the largest in Harry's armory. Harry had cut off any attempted argument by walking off into the forest, and telling the others to come after him in five minutes.

An hour had passed, and no contact had been made with Harry since.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

Three minutes of him silently following her later, they were far enough into the woods to have some reasonable degree of privacy; Ginny stopped abruptly, and turned to facing him.

"Why would you want to talk to me anyways?" She demanded.

"Like I said earlier," He said, "You look like you need someone to talk to. I'm Tom, by the way."

Ginny shivered at his name, and her hand twitched, instinctively summoning her wand from within her robes.

"Woah girl!" Tom said, backing away hastily, hands raised non-threateningly, "What'd I say?"

"Nothing," Ginny said harshly, lowering her wand, but not returning it to its sheathe, "I've had bad experience with Toms, that's all."

"Well," Tom said, somewhat warily, stepping a little closer but keeping his hands up, "I hope I can redeem my name at least somewhat in your eyes. You date some kind of jerk?"

"None of your business," Ginny said, shaking her head sharply, "Again, what do you want?"

"Well," Tom said, slowly lowering his hands and looking her up and down again, "You look like you're about ready to explode from stress, how about I show you a good way I know to blow off steam?"

"I swear," Ginny growled menacingly, "If that's some kind of lame pick-up line, I'll-"

"Nothing of the sort!" Tom said hastily, eyes widening slightly as he stared at her, "Come on down to the lake, and I'll show you what I meant."

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

"_North!_" Blaise shouted, and Neville, Luna, and Parvati wheeled to face the named direction, already raising general-purpose shields as they did so.

A wave of fire leapt into existence twenty meters further into the woods, sweeping down towards the team's position. Blaise dropped his shield in favor of conjuring a powerful jet of water, rapidly eroding the center of the wall of flames, while the other three intensified their shields and brought them together to protect the others. By the time they washed over the group, the flames brought heat, but no pain; the other four sweated, but maintained their watch of the other avenues of assault Harry could approach them through.

The next attack wasn't long in coming, A trio of _pop-pop-pop_'s heralded the arrival of a burst of weapon's fire from the South, and two of the three paintballs took Draco in the chest.

"Oh, _bugger_," Malfoy scowled, raising his arms to indicate he'd been 'killed.'

"_Break Seven_," Neville hissed, and the group dropped to the forest floor, silently casting disillusion charms on themselves as they did so.

A moment later, a paint bomb was hurled in towards their position.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

Old quarries were, perhaps unsurprisingly, not all that difficult to find within the Continental US. This one had, originally at least, been rather small, but over the last couple of years, had expanded somewhat in scale, and currently looked to be scheduled for _rapid_ upscaling.

A thunderous detonation, heavily muted to those not within the quarry by a set of crude wards, tore a cubic meter out of one of the weathered stone walls, rubble and sharp shards of stone flying everywhere. More than just a few pieces ricocheted off of a translucent magical shield, which wavered, but did not collapse, under the onslaught.

"Girl," Tom said, slightly strained, "You must have it worse than I thought, and I already thought it was pretty bad."

Ginny growled as the dust settled, allowing her to see through Tom's slightly-shaky shield to the gash she had just carved into the stone face of the artificial canyon that made up the Quarry.

Then she slowly began to wind up another explosive hex.

Tom swallowed the urge to swear as he saw what she was doing, and reinforced his shield, pouring every bit of energy he could find within himself into it. By the time Ginny finished winding up her second spell, he was sweating, both from the strain, and from worry about what her second blast would do.

The second detonation shattered scarcely a tenth as much of the quarry wall as the first had, but _not_ because of a lack of force. The first blast had struck a cracked and stressed point in the wall, and more or less finished what nature had started; the second detonation tore open a wholly intact section of stone, and while the resulting shrapnel was substantially smaller, it was _much_ more energetic. Tom's shield shuddered under repeated high-velocity impacts; fortunately, it held against the initial wave of stone fragments, and the rest were ricochets, reduced substantially in both mass and velocity.

His shield didn't fail, but he more or less collapsed once the rocks stopped raining.

"Can't hold for-" Tom began, but broke off, his eyes widening, as Ginny produced a second wand, silently conjured a shield with it, and began winding up for another explosive spell.

Acting on the half-formed instincts of an American movie-goer who'd never been in a life-threatening situation in his life, Tom dropped prone, and covered his head with his arms. The next five minutes of his life passed in a haze of thunderous explosions, angry snarls from the pint-sized redhead next to him, and near-suffocating stone dust.

When it ended, it took him a moment to realize that the deafening explosions had actually stopped; he waited another moment before risking a look upward at the girl beside him. She looked a little unsteady on her feet, her chest was heaving, and as Tom's hearing returned, he was able to tell that she was panting harshly, her hands holding white-knuckled grips on both of her wands. For a long minute, Tom just watched as she stood there, her face a mixture of fury and tightly-held pain.

Then he slowly stood, double-checking himself for injuries as he did so, and carefully, cautiously, _slowly_, reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She _moved_, there was a flash of red, and he lost consciousness.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

All was silent once more; Blaise had lost the rest of the group in the split, and unlike infrared imaging gear, the night-vision goggles lent no aid in piercing disillusionment charms. In essence, this left the various party members as unable to spot each other as Harry was, or at least as they _hoped_ he was. Blaise, at the least, had _long_ since begun to suspect that Harry had some means of detection that he had yet to share with anyone else (save Hermione and his mother, of course.)

Blaise, however, had to content himself with taking the high ground, in his attempts to spot the rest of the group, or even (highly unlikely) get an opportunity to snipe Harry before he next struck. So he was climbing a tree. Not flying up a tree, not levitating up a tree, the only magic he was using was a silencing charm on top of the disillusioning charm, the actual _work_ was being done by his muscles. He was quite certain that his mother would have been absolutely _horrified_ to learn that he was 'slogging it like a muggle.'

He wasn't entirely certain what it said about his psyche that his mother's opinion of him so readily (and _constantly_) leapt to mind, but he had long since decided that his mother didn't know _shit_ about how to live outside of high-society suirrays and tea parties. He strongly suspected that if a muggle stuck a gun in her face, she wouldn't even know what it was. His animosity towards her wasn't strong enough for him to _want _such a thing to happen, but he also knew that part of him would find a bitter satisfaction if the overly-demanding woman were ultimately done in by something that she so despised.

So, he found himself a stable and reasonably comfortable perch some thirty feet up the tree, and settled in to wait.

((()))

Neville, Hannah, and Parvati had managed to remain grouped up, largely because Parvati had fallen _on_ him during their breakaway from Harry's paint-and-flame ambush, and Hannah tended to devote a _great deal_ of her attention to keeping track of her boyfriend. Neville, despite his now-considerable size, moved through the forest like a stalking cat, barely managing to keep himself to a slow enough pace that the others didn't give them away by generating some sort of noise or another.

Neville had become a _firm_ believer that the best defense is a good offense after the battle of Hogwarts, and was currently operating under the assumption that if their speed dropped too much, Harry would manage another ambush with little difficulty. Hannah and Parvati didn't particularly agree, but knew their contrary opinions had more to do with how difficult keeping pace with the large Gryffindor without giving them away was than any _rational_ objective, and held their silence.

Hannah was dearly wishing that she'd finished learning the Animagus transformation; Parvati was wishing that she'd learned to fly properly in her form, and that it wasn't so damn _colorful_. Beautiful birds were all well and good to look at in a zoo, but they were damn well _useless_ for being subtle with. It didn't even occur to the girls that their mindset had switched to 'keep up with Neville,' rather than 'be ready to defeat enemy.'

They were lucky that Harry wasn't pursuing them first.

((()))

"What _is_ that?" Susan whispered quietly as she slowly sank herself and Luna into a hollow in the forested mountain slope.

"Draco dropped it," Luna supplied helpfully as she rolled the squishy object back and forth between her hands, "It's a muggle balloon."

"I can see _that_," Susan said sarcastically, "But what's it _for_?"

"I rather suspect it's a paint bomb," Luna said with a smile, "Just the kind of clever little trick that Draco would try to use on Harry."

"And the kind of reason that Harry usually takes Draco out first," Susan agreed softly, "How does it work?"

"I've no idea!" Luna said brightly.

((()))

Daphne knew _knew_ as soon as she realized that she was out alone after Harry's initial ambush, that the fight was functionally over for her. She couldn't think of any particular _rational_ reason to think as much, but still, she _knew_ it nonetheless. She couldn't really think of any effective combat tactics to attempt to employ against Harry by herself; he was faster, stronger, more experienced, more clever, and above all, more _vicious_ if he set his mind to it.

_That_ was something she would likely never have known if it weren't for the battle of Hogwarts, and honestly wished she'd never _had_ to learn. But beggars didn't get to be choosers, and he _had_ been what she wanted from him, even if their relationship hadn't needed to enter a romantic context for her to have it.

She still wasn't certain if she was pleased, or displeased about that particular wrinkle.

In the end, she attempted to be counter-intuitive tactically, laying down over the vivid pattern of splattered paint Potter's paint bomb had left at the ambush site, hoping that one of the others would find her before Harry did. It was not, however, to be.

"_Not a bad thought_," Harry's voice whispered in her ear, "_But you were still the one the most exposed._"

She couldn't see him. She couldn't see him _anywhere _as she twisted her head back and forth, trying to pick him out of the twilight woods; a hand gently came to rest against her forehead, and a faint red flash rendered her unconscious.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

Tom woke abruptly; a sensation he was not at all familiar with, the result of a _Reenervate_ spell.

"Sorry," Ginny said, looking down at the boy sheepishly, "Combat instincts took over."

Tom spent some time, just laying on the quarry floor, appreciating his position; he didn't appear to hurt anywhere in particular, and it wasn't very often that he was able to enjoy a pretty girl looking at him in worry.

"That was just a stunner, right?" He eventually asked.

"Lily taught us not to rely on anything more dangerous as an opener," Ginny said, nodding, "It seemed funny at the time, her talking about 'better safe than sorry' in a fight, but it really isn't, when you get to situations like this."

"Lily would be Misses Potter, yes?" Tom asked, waiting for Ginny's nod before continuing, "Speaking of names, I still haven't gotten yours."

"Oh!" Ginny said, blushing faintly at her social _faux paus_, "I'm sorry, I'm Ginny Weasley, one of the Hogwarts Exiles."

"Well," Tom said, pulling himself upright, and surveying the heavily pockmarked Quarry wall in front of them, "I was fairly certain you were one of the Exiles, don't think there are any other brits hanging out here in this part of North Dakota. Quite the number you did on the Quarry here."

"Well," Ginny said hesitantly, "You _were_ right about me needing to blow off steam. Sorry about stunning you, really."

"It's alright," Tom said amiably, "To make up for it, you can tell me about what's troubling you."

Ginny made a face, but then reluctantly nodded.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

"_Bugger_ this lot for a load of dragon dung!" Neville roared, closing his eyes and covering them with his left arm, while casting with his right.

"LUMOS!" He roared, and a brilliant flare of light erupted as he poured magic into the simple spell, visible even through his arm and eyelids.

Sticking his illuminated dominant wand to the back of his head, point-up, with a silent sticking charm, Neville cracked his eyes open and glared out into the woods, now as bright as though it were noon. It hurt, but Neville's _pride_ had taken a hell of a lot more punishment than his _eyes_ had, and he was _quite _ready to get a little bit of that back.

The brilliant light rendered the disillutionment charms marginally effective at best, Harry and Neville's both, and unlike Harry, Neville had been prepared for the blinding spell; he could see Harry a dozen and a half yards away, a partially concealed blur behind one of the smaller trees in the forest.

"_Incendio_," He snarled, overpowering the spell through his secondary wand to the point where it nearly rivalled Harry's wall of flame from earlier that night.

Harry reacted to the spell instantly, silently conjuring a wall of flame in counter; the two clashed, Harry's slightly the stronger, but not enough so to truly overwhelm Neville's spell. The two masses of flame shattered each other, tongues of flame flying everywhere, and lighting dozens of tiny spot fires.

A rapid-fire series of dull blue spells began rocketing towards Neville, but he drifted right, avoiding Harry's half-blind spellfire, and whipped out another fire spell, this one, however, silently. He had hoped that the lack of verbal warning would give him a better chance of scoring a hit on his much-smaller yearmate, but when the wash of flame had finished passing over Harry's position, there was no sign it had tagged him.

Neville's eyes narrowed, and he snatched his dominant wand from the back of his head, extinguishing the light spell as he did so, and began launching jets of fire at the blur only faintly-visible by firelight. A few seconds later, Parvati and Hannah recovered enough from their own flash-blindness to join him.

((()))

Blaise _stared_ down the slope at the erupting conflagration a quarter mile away. He shook himself a second later, forcing the shock down, and retrieved his Omnioculars from one of his belt-pouches, unshrinking them and zooming in on the section of forest that was rapidly turning into an inferno. At a range of roughly four hundred years, even with the Omnioculars magical enhancement, he could barely discern the disillusioned blurs exchanging spellfire from the haze of smoke rapidly encroaching on the area.

Normally, discerning Harry from the others would have been easy, due to Harry's prolific rate of spell production, but the forest was currently occupied by _two_ individuals directing nearly-inhuman barrages of spellfire at each other.

For a long moment, Blaise wished he'd asked Harry for a more modern firearm, a weapon reasonably capable of serving as a sniper's tool, which the elephant gun most certainly _wasn't_.

Then he shook off the thought, slung his rifle over his shoulder, returned the Omnioculars to their pouch, and leapt out of the tree, taking off towards the confrontation at a run.

((()))

"Are you _sure_ you want us to come in from the air?" Susan whispered furiously as Luna ferried her towards the fiery confrontation uphill from their current position.

"Positive," Luna said, "And remember, _calm_. Tranquil. You're just dropping the bomb, nothing more, nothing less."

"Easy for _you_ to say," Susan grumbled from her position, hanging from beneath Luna's broom on a simple wooden harness.

((()))

Neville's heart _roared_ with drive and euphoric purpose; they weren't _winning_ the fight, but they most certainly weren't _losing_ either. The battlefield was very nearly _made_ of flame at this point, and only liberal use of the Flame-freezing charm had kept himself and the girls _alive_, much less uninjured at this point, but the blazing bonfire of a forest had _finally_ allowed them to keep eyes on Harry. Both he and they were still disillusioned, and that, combined with the smoke, may have prevented lesser men and women from keeping eyes on them, but experience was a _harsh_ teacher.

And all of them had had _more_ than enough harsh experiences to learn from.

Spells sliced back and forth through the air; neither party cared about color or incantations, none of them were fool enough to use any spell that wouldn't result in instant incapacitation or crippling of their foe, and there were _plenty_ of such spells, especially with anti-apparition wards up, and Harry unable to escape binds and webs via such means. Neville bothered little with fire any longer, the grass, the trees, the bushes, literally _everything_ surrounding them was already on fire, and adding to it would serve little purpose any longer.

Harry was not so hesitant; while Neville ignored Harry's bursts of flame, trusting the flame-freezing charm he'd cast upon himself and attempting to advance on the rapidly maneuvering blur of his opponent with dogged determination, the girls following in the Longbottom's wake still instinctively shied away from the white-hot flames conjured from the Potter's bare hands. Harry was faster, stronger, more experienced, but between the three of them, his opponents had managed to eclipse his rate of spellfire, and their continuous advance prevented him from easily breaking contact.

Worse, he could sense Luna approaching from above on a balloon, and he _knew_ she wouldn't approach from such an exposed position without a plan, leaving him hesitant to retreat through the air, and he couldn't sense Susan's presence, which meant she was just as likely laying in wait in the earth beneath him. Blaise was approaching from the East, setting himself up to pincer Harry _very_ effectively, and last of all, the constant need to evade spellfire made it near impossible for him to wind up for one of his more powerful magics.

Looked like he would need to kick it up a notch.

((()))

Blaise was more than a little amazed to find the fight was still on when he arrived, and decided speed was more important than subtlety, blitzing into the clearing to join whichever three of his allies were still fighting before Potter managed to bring them down.

Then the fighting _stopped_, just _stopped_. All spellfire ceased, and an odd, egotistical part of Blaise that the Slytherin had thought long since dead tried to impress the idea upon the rest of him that _obviously_ his arrival had changed _everything_.

"Where did he go?" Neville's voice came as a growl from one of the blurs that he _could_ still see.

"No idea," Hannah said, halfway to breathless, "No blur, nothing. He must have figured out a way to turn _completely_ invisible.

"Why not use that in the first place then?" Blaise demanded shortly, his run rendering _him_ slightly breathless as well as he stalked up through the flames to join the other three.

"He's _testing_ us," Parvati half-gasped bitingly herself, "At least we pushed him to the-"

"Test _failed." _Harry's voice came from behind them, and a blast of red magic washed over them all.

"COWABUNGA!" Luna shouted gleefully as she dropped down onto the point where Harry's magic had emerged from, from directly above, falling almost two dozen yards from her broom.

Harry whipped out, a repetitive chain of stunners smashing up into, and then through her shield as she fell towards him; he finished with a levitation charm as the tiny Ravenclaw was rendered unconscious by his spellfire, and she landed gently behind him.

"And fail again," he said half-regretfully, "Much closer thi-"

And that was when the paint bomb detonated four feet above, and five feet away from, his head.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

"It's all really stupid," Ginny hedged, making a halfhearted effort to convince Tom he didn't really want to hear what was going on.

"If people weren't stupid," Tom replied with a wry smile, "They wouldn't be so frustrating, and they'd probably hurt each other a whole lot less."

"Ohhhh," Ginny growled, "_Frustrating_ is right. My mum..."

"Your mother..." Tom helpfully prodded after a protracted moment of silence.

"She's so _stupid!_" Ginny exclaimed, "She's so _stuck_ on _going back to bloody England!_"

"You don't want to?" Tom asked cautiously.

"I'm not _against_ it," Ginny huffed, starting to pace around the rubble-strewn quarry floor, "But she acts like being in England is just automatically _better_ than anywhere else."

"And you don't agree," Tom said, more certain this time.

"_No!_" Ginny half-shouted, "It's not that I know of anywhere else that's necessarily better either, but she just won't _learn_. Our house in England, the Burrow, if it hasn't been burnt down by some supremacist prick, is a glorified shack built up to being five floors tall, and the only thing holding it together is magic! I'm _sixteen_, and _I_ know enough magic to have made a better house than the burrow, I could have done it in a _month. _But mum never bothered! And now, any time that I try to turn the shack we live in _now_ into something better, she starts harping on me about 'putting down roots' when we'll 'just be home in a few months anyways'! What _utter rot!_"

Ginny was panting again by the time she finished _that_ rant, and turned back to Tom, finding him eying her with careful consideration.

"I don't suppose you've heard of a specialist economy before?" He asked.

Ginny shook her head, still not fully recovered from her rant.

"Well," Tom said, "Pretty much all modern economies are specialist economies; go back three centuries, and in the non-magical world, the vast majority of people were largely self-sufficient. Most people worked in agriculture or fishing, and their only critical purchases were the tools they used in said profession. Give a village a blacksmith, and that's the only specialized industry they really _needed_. In some ways it was simpler, but it also meant that each person needed to know how to build their own house, maintain it, keep their own work animals, some degree of midwifery, basic medical knowledge for splinting broken bones, etc, etc."

"What's your point?" Ginny asked, now only slightly breathless.

"It's a thing of expectations and attitudes," Tom said, "If people wanted something done, they expected to do it themselves. If you wanted your house to be larger, you had to do the work yourself, if you wanted a better bed, you'd have to make it yourself. If you wanted new tableware, you'd probably carve it from wood yourself. That's just how it was for most people. In the last century or two though, and for considerably longer in the magical world, people have specialized in a particular skill, earned their living at that, and paid other specialists to do most of the things that 'everybody' used to do."

"So basically, you're saying that my mum just doesn't _think_ of these kinds of things," Ginny said, "They don't even occur to her."

"I'm a student of history," Tom said, shrugging, "In some ways, you could say the world is defined by what peopledon't think of, and particularly, what they don't _want_ to think of. "

"And _mum_," Ginny grumbled, "Doesn't seem to want to think of _anything_."

"Ah," Tom said, and Ginny picked up a hint of sadness in his voice, "_That_ bit I've got some experience with. Odds on, it's not that she doesn't want to think of _anything_, it's that she doesn't want to think about the things that _you_ think are important. Once one of your parents does that long enough, it's hard to see past that, to the other things they _do_ think about."

"Oh?" Ginny said, eyeing tom up and down thoughtfully, "So what do _you_ know about such things."

"Well," Tom said with a sigh, "Let me tell you a little bit about my father, and the hardware store he runs."

((()))

AN: Wow. Working on my original stuff _really_ cuts into the time for fanfiction. Ah well; one pays, the other doesn't, the one that pays has to have priority _sometimes_. Still don't want to break my monthly schedule on this story though. In case it wasn't obvious, this chapter was (unfortunately) unbeta'd.


	6. Chapter 5

AN: Whelp. This ties up the visit-in-Puerto Rico arc. I ended up writing a scene with the Weasley twins, and as I'm sure will surprise no one, even if it wasn't very long, it turned into a bit of an oddball. I'm a firm believer that most works benefit from a good range of emotions expressed in a story, helps add depth and 'life' to the piece.

((()))

Brutal Harry, Chapter 5.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

"_Ahahahahahaha!"_

Usually, Hermione Granger was not a Witch noted for her laugh.

"The-the-theeea_aahhAHAHAHAHA!_"

Those present were considering revising their opinion of the hysterical brunette; once she fell onto the floor, and started pounding it with her fist, most of them _did_.

"It isn't t-_that_ funny," Harry said irritably, trying _again_, to remove the pink paint that had more or less soaked him with a cleaning charm.

"I'm inclined to disagree, personally," Draco said mildly, his face the very image of serenity, save his eyes, "I think pink is an _excellent_ juxtaposition to your customary mood and attitude."

Hermione just continued to laugh, while the others made use of the pseudo-shower they'd added to the chalet's kitchen months ago to wash off the mess their mock-battle had created. They could have done it with magic, of course, but hot water lent a feeling of psychological and physical cleanliness that cleaning spells couldn't replicate. And it was easy enough to use magic to dry their soaked clothing afterward. The paint smeared all over Harry, however, was a product of the Weasley twins, and actively resisted being removed from his person by both magic and mundane means, thwarting every different variety of spell or detergent he tried to use.

"Most importantly," Neville said, _his_ voice practically _drowning _in satisfaction, "We _got_ you. We got you _good_."

"Oh?" Harry said, turning and raising pink eyebrows as he stared the stockier boy down, "So, you would consider a mission outcome where you achieved your objective, but everyone except Susan died _good?_"

Hermione stopped laughing.

"You've all improved in both your combat skills, and your ability to use them effectively, immensely," Harry said with forceful calm, "And as we agreed, I'll allow you to accompany me into the field. Realistically speaking, I very much doubt that either Fudge's thugs or Moody's fire teams could inflict anywhere near as many casualties on you, but remember, Britain _is not safe_, and if you get sloppy, _you will die_."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

"My father," Tom said, transfiguring some of the quarry floor into sand for a more comfortable seat, "Inherited his hardware store from grandpa, who died when he was almost fifty from a heart attack. I barely remember grandpa, but I do remember things changing at home, dad was a _lot_ busier after he took over the store.

"I'm not entirely sure why dad decided he needed to do such a good job, but he ended up putting a lot of time and energy into learning how to run a business. And not just handling the accounts or doing taxes or whatnot, but actually learning how to get people to work together reasonably well, and keeping up a good relationship with his suppliers and stuff, which hasn't always been easy as tax law and stuff steadily drives the US economy towards fewer, larger conglomerates and corporations."

"Wait a minute," Ginny said, "I know what a corporation is, and I can infer what a conglomerate is, but how does tax law affect that?"

"It's complicated on the whole," Tom said, "But a simplified version, is that the more complex the tax code, and the harder it is to properly utilize it, the more it favors larger companies capable of employing a larger number of accountants and lawyers to take advantage of the system, while smaller companies have to make do with less. That's not all there is to it though, and it's getting off topic."

"It's enough for now," Ginny said, waving him off, "Keep going."

"Right," Tom said, shifting on his impromptu patch of sand, "So anyways, the thing about my dad is, while he figured out how to get most people to set aside personal conflicts, or work for him without resenting him, he never figured out how to help people _resolve_ their conflicts. And he never figured out how to deal with his kids, and sort out why we kept fighting with him."

"Why _did_ you keep fighting with him?" Ginny asked with a trace of hesitance.

"Because he tried to run the family like he tried to run the store," Tom said, frustration and bitterness edging into his voice, "He was the law, he said how things would be, and there was no arguing it, no matter how ridiculous his position was. And that's just not right. I believe in 'Honor your father and mother,' but I don't believe in mindlessly doing as I'm told. That's not going to help anything."

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

"Morning Harry," Hermione said with a yawn and a smile, "You sleep alright?"

"F-fairly well," Harry said with a nod as he entered the kitchen, where Hermione was working over some Runes as she ate breakfast, "And you?"

"Well enough, I suppose," Hermione said tiredly, "I was hoping to get at least an array for refining control finished, but since you were busy all yesterday, I haven't really had a chance to test it properly."

"S-sorry," Harry said, shrugging as he wheeled himself over to the table, "You know h-how they get about c-coming with me."

"Yes, Harry," Hermione said, scowling a little, "I do, especially considering how _I_ want to come with you."

"_You_ kn-know that Fudge is _sp-specifically_ looking f-for you," Harry said firmly, "It's t-too dangerous."

"And Fudge is trying even harder to get you," Hermione sighed with no small amount of resignation, "But you're a lot harder to hurt than me. Same as with your mother. I _understand_ why you don't want us in the UK Harry, but we don't want to be separated from you either."

Harry sat quietly at the table, remotely manipulating cereal, milk, a bowl and spoon to fetch his own breakfast. He didn't want to argue with Hermione, or his mother for that matter, but he knew what they were capable of (he had tested their abilities _personally_) and he wasn't willing to risk them in his work in Britain.

Hermione, on the other hand, knew that as things stood, the only way she could possibly convince Harry to let her come with him was deliberate and persistent emotional blackmail, something she was not remotely willing to engage in. The whole subject frustrated her, as she was a largely rational creature, and understood his logical reasons for wanting to keep her out of England (especially if, as they suspected, the Fudge regime had realized that a Philosopher's Stone had been fused with her), but she still _knew_ that the separation was _wrong_ somehow, even if she couldn't construct an adequate rational argument as to _why_. This conflict of logic and emotion was endlessly frustrating to her, and not taking that frustration out on Harry was one of the more difficult issues of self-control she'd found in her relationship with him.

Neither of them, however, had become so worked up over the issue that they were ready to have a pointless fight about it, so breakfast passed quietly, if somewhat tensely, until Lily came in and joined them.

"Ah, staying in England came up again, I see," Lily said, looking back and forth between Harry and Hermione as she moved around the table to give them both a good morning hug, "Now that that's out of the way for the day, Harry, how often have you been using magic to override your curse damage like you were last night?"

Harry winced; she had brought out the _Mother_ voice.

"N-no more than an h-hour a day," Harry said carefully, looking his mother in the eye, as he attempted to suppress his nervousness, "M-most days n-not at all."

"I suppose that's as best as we can hope for," Lily said with a sigh, "Now tell me how they managed to beat you last night, and how you'll keep some idiot 'auror' from using the same trick to kill my son."

Hermione knew that wasn't what Lily particularly _wanted_ to talk about with Harry, but she also knew that it was a subject of conversation they could both engage in, even if it suited Harry's personality more than Lily's. Even now, Harry could be a prickly personality to Hermione and his mother, and moving the conversation onto a more objective subject, one where Lily could demonstrate how she cared about her son in a way that he understood, was just the sort of thing Hermione was happy Lily was around for, as she rarely thought of such things herself.

Both Harry and herself were _very_ direct people, and it sometimes made it hard for them to relate to each other when there was an unresolved disagreement between them. Hermione wasn't sure if Lily was simply more capable of being indirect by nature, or experienced and mature enough to recognize when Harry needed a more subtle touch in his life. Either way, she was grateful for it.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

"So what _do_ you do about your father?" Ginny asked, torn between frustration and curiosity.

"At this point," Tom said, shrugging somewhat sheepishly, "I mostly _don't_. I spent years trying to fight with him. About things like a curfew that had no exception, requirements on how much time I spend on homework, even if I didn't have any left; I ultimately took control of my life by acing a GED, and getting a job of my own."

"What's a GED?" Ginny asked curiously.

"General Equivalency Degree," Tom said, "Or Diploma, or something else, I forget. Basically, it means I know what high school is supposed to teach me, so I can skip. Between that, and earning my own income, my dad backed off on trying to control my life so much."

"I wish we had something like that," Ginny huffed, folding her legs and sitting down cross-legged, "It might get mum off my back about everything. Or at least let me move out on my own," Ginny paused for a moment, her expression shifting from irritated to thoughtful, "What's it like living on your own?"

"I don't," Tom said, stretching out and shifting posture to face Ginny better as he spoke, "I still live with my parents."

"Um," Ginny said, running over Tom's words in her mind, "I guess you never said you moved out, but I sort of assumed you had, with how fed up you said you were with your dad."

"I won't be a legal adult until I'm eighteen," Tom said with some frustration, "I'd have to get permission from one of my parents to rent a place of my own, and there's no way my mom would go against my dad. Besides, if I tried to force the issue, I think I'd lose what little chance I have of fixing things with dad."

For a few minutes, the quarry was nearly silent, only the wind, a few bird calls, and the chittering of squirrels in the trees above them breaking the stillness while Ginny thought, and Tom waited.

"So what do you think I should _do_?" Ginny eventually asked, "I don't really have anything like a magical GED I can take, and while I've learned a lot about the muggle world, I don't have any skills that would make me an attractive hire to anyone there."

"I'm not you, so I can't make the call in the end," Tom said, "But what I'd _recommend_, is two things, trying one or both of them. First, spend as much of your time as you can without blatantly avoiding your mother away from her. Don't _totally_ shun her, just avoid contact as much as you reasonably can. Second, when you _are_ around her, don't talk about things you fight about all the time. Pick one day of the week, and try to talk to her about stuff that bothers you then, you'll probably fight, but it won't be everything there is anymore."

"I don't know if there _is_ anything we can talk about without fighting," Ginny grumped quietly.

"Maybe," Tom said, "They're just suggestions. If you do try the second one, but can't find _anything_ to talk about without fighting for a week or more, then it's even worse than my thing with my dad, and it's time for something more drastic."

"Like what?" Ginny asked, finding an odd anticipation within herself at the thought of something justifiably 'more drastic.'

"I don't know," Tom said as he pulled himself to his feet and started to brush sand off his clothes, "'s a bridge you cross when you get to it. Either way, it's getting to be time for supper, and I'm starving."

He reached out and offered her his hand.

"Food at the camp cafeteria ain't nothing special, but want to eat with me and the other camp workers?"

"Beats eating with _mum_," Ginny grunted, though she was smiling faintly as she took his hand, and let him help her up.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

"S-so," Harry said, looking around at the Hogwarts Exiles assembled in the Chalet's living room, "You all m-managed to score a hit on m-me, and as we agreed, that means I'll l-let you come with m-me."

Not everyone _smiled_, but there was an almost physically tangible sense of satisfaction from the others, especially Neville and Blaise.

"Next m-month, if you're r-ready to go," Harry continued, "You can all c-come with me. H-however, there's one m-more thing for you to learn," He levitated a relatively small tome into the room, and dropped it on the coffee table roughly in the middle of the room, "Occlumency. If y-you can't protect y-your secrets and mine at least s-somewhat, you're a l-liability."

Expressions of outrage began to arise amongst the others, but Harry pressed on, cutting them off.

"I d-don't expect you to beat me in th-this," Harry said firmly, "But you need to at l-least be good enough to recognize when s-someone is trying to g-get into your mind, so you can b-break the spell."

"It took me two weeks to learn to do that," Lily put in, "When I was in fifth year. After two months, I could kick out any of the people I trusted enough to practice with, mostly Alice Longbottom. You should all be more than capable of managing it, if you haven't already."

"They do teach the family heir the basics in a number of houses," Draco admitted calmly, "It's been years since I've had any practice in fending off attacks, but I could most likely pass your test right now."

"Mmm," Luna said distractedly, "I don't know Occlumency, but I know something like it."

"Aunty taught me some," Susan volunteered.

"I was never much good with it," Blaise admitted, "But I have been taught."

"Well," Harry said, "Th-then you can help the others learn. Everyone wh-wh-who makes the bar next m-month can c-come to Europe with me."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, March, 1997._

Two young men, possessed of red hair, freckles, near identical bodies and fully identical genetics, were relaxing in a modest wooden building, built along the lines of a hunting lodge, chucking a balloon back and forth between themselves with magic. The room itself was fairly sparsely appointed, a few simple wooden chairs, a card table, a mini-fridge and microwave, a fireplace (currently lit) and a radio, which was currently playing-

"_This is your DJ, Padfoot White, and next up on The Big Jazz KRZQ 75.3, is a smashing rendition of one of the classics passed down from Lead Belly-"_

A swing/jazz station, which generally suited the mood the Weasley twins had been in when they'd turned it on, and continued to do so after the fireplace flared, and the first member of the party they were waiting for came tumbling out.

"'ello there Malfoy," Fred said amiably, "How was Jamaica?"

"Rather warm for this time of year," Malfoy said evenly as he translated the momentum imparted by his international floo journey into a roll halfway across the lodge then up onto his feet, "How was the weekend here in the colonies?"

"Smashing," George said with a toothy grin, "Now down to business, _did it work?_"

"Did _what_ work?" Draco asked calmly, managing to give the impression he had no idea whatsoever as to what was being asked of him.

"The _paint_ of course," Gred said, rolling his eyes as Susan Bones tumbled out of the fireplace, "Unless you'd like to tell us whether or not any of our _other_ little innovations worked?"

"Which Innovations?" Draco asked as he seated himself on one of the chairs with some poise, maintaining his unflappable demeanor.

"Well," Forge said, his grin growing.

"We'd tell you," Grorge continued, grinning as well.

"But then we'd have to obliviate you," Frorge finished as Blaise tumbled out of the fireplace.

"The paint worked," Susan said with a respectful nod towards the twins as she dusted herself off, "Harry eventually got rid of it by brute-forcing a _Finite Incatatem_, but no regular spell or non-magical cleaner would get it off."

"_Awesome_," Freg said, "How'd you guys get it _onto_ him."

"Oh," Luna said as she happily cartwheeled out of the floo and across the room, coming to a stop in a perfect handstand, smiling up at the twins, "We dropped a paint-balloon on him, just like that one you're playing with."

"But how'd you hit him with the balloon?" Ged asked, juggling his own balloon between his hands with magic.

"We beat him in the wards-up fight," Blaise said, somewhat savagely, as he retrieved a bottle of orange juice from the mini-fridge, conjured a glass, and poured himself some, "Next month, we're going to Europe."

"_Sweet_," Both twins said.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997. _

After the last of the group, save Lily and herself, had passed through the floo, Hermione leaned over and kissed Harry full on the mouth. Harry's jaw dropped, his eyes went wide, and he began gibbering silently in shock.

"Remember me, while you're gone," Hermione said, a smile quirking her lips, "And know that I'll be trying to get something together to help you protect everyone while they're in Europe with you."

Then, because she was so pleased with the first outcome, she kissed him again, before scampering off through the floo herself. Harry was so out of it, that he barely noticed his mother's goodbye hug, _completely_ missed her smirk, and was totally unaware of Dobby bursting into laughter once Lily had left.

((()))

_Malfoy Manor, United Kingdom, April, 1997._

The instant Harry arrived outside the estate's gates, he knew things had gone _horribly_ wrong. Smoke hung heavy in the air, and the orange glow of reflected firelight glimmered off the bottom of the cloud. More, his sensitivity to active magic told him that the formidable wards that protected the estate had been shattered.

Harry wasted no time, he overrode his body's natural control of its limbs via magic, yanked his invisibility cloak out its pouch on his combat harness, and then Apparated into the manor's entrance hall, placing his silent arrival along the hall's southern wall. He was not surprised in the least to find the hall a shattered wreck, clear signs of an intense spell-battle presence, as well as a number of corpses. What did surprise him, were the brass shell casings and bullet holes spread about the chamber; he had not expected Lucius to adapt _that_ far to the march of technology.

No firearms were present, however, which meant that whichever faction had conducted the strike had known enough to not leave discarded weapons lying around. Nine months ago, Harry would have immediately discarded Fudge's 'Aurors' as the perpetrators of the attack, but they had _learned_ since then.

_I should charge them for my 'lessons,'_ Harry thought grimly as he silently crept further into the shattered ruin. The manor itself, as best as he could tell, wasn't burning; unsurprising given its stone construction and heavily-enchanted nature. A few swift apparitions to the various wings of the manor confirmed his suspicion, as well as the fact that aside from some hasty looting, the manor was largely intact, and Harry moved on to the wooden houses the Malfoys had constructed for the refugees under their protection.

When he appeared in the field where the structures had stood, he instinctively applied both a filtration charm to his face, and a flame-freezing charm to his body. There had been dozens of modest, two-story wooden houses; now half of them had collapsed, and all of them were on fire; massive, roaring blazes with tongues of flame reaching dozens of feet up into the air. Moving as swiftly as he could without sacrificing meaningful stealth, Harry checked each structure with a charm designed to detect heartbeats, and found none living.

He did find a number of burning corpses, however, more than a dozen, all-told. Which removed any chance of this attack being the work of Moody's men; Harry Apparated back to Malfoy Manor proper immediately, and stowed his cloak.

If any of those responsible for this attack remained, he _wanted_ them to find him now.

A silent tracking charm, a more advanced version of the 'point me' charm that Hermione had developed for him, failed to reveal Lucius Malfoy's location, most likely meaning that he was behind the wards of the Ministry of Magic itself, something he would investigate in more detail later. A second iteration of the same charm, however, directed him into Lucius' study, which he rapidly searched for signs of Narcissa Malfoy's presence. His search, both magical and physical, revealed nothing in the luxuriously-appointed study, and Harry snarled silently in frustration.

Closing his eyes to focus, Harry collected his magic, pooling, concentrating, focusing a great portion of it together as he drew his wand, and then cast a spell with the presence of wand, movements, and incantation for the first time in months.

"_Finite Incantatem_."

His magic rippled through the study in a visible wave, tearing apart and dispelling every magical effect present therein. The desk exploded, as magically expanded spaces within had their contents shunted into reality, and splinters of wood sliced across Harry's body, tearing his clothes, but failing to pierce his magically-warded skin. Harry waited a moment for the study to settle, then cast his detection charm again; it drew his attention to beneath the exquisite Persian rug that dominated the study's floor. Said rug had already been damaged by the desk, so Harry thought little of simply yanking it aside by brute force of magic, then vanishing the marble stones that made up the floor beneath it.

A massive metal safe was revealed beneath; Harry latched onto its door with his magic and _yanked_. Rather than tearing the door out as he had intended, it ripped the entire safe out of the floor, leaving it hovering in the middle of the room. Snorting in irritation, Harry shaped a simple unlocking charm, _Alohomora_, then massively overcharged it with magic, and slammed it into the safe's door. The safe nearly tore apart its locking mechanism obeying his magic's command to open, but Harry ignored it.

Within the safe lay an unbreathing Narcissa Malfoy, laying haphazardly across a pile of golden trinkets and other valuables that Harry had no interest in. Harry gently levitated the woman out of the safe to himself, and carefully eased her mouth open, and took a sniff.

_Draught of the Living Death_, He thought silently to himself, _This would have kept her for decades. Well done, Lucius._

With no further ado, he wrapped an arm around the floating woman's waist, and Apparated out of the Malfoy Estates.

((()))

_Underground Safehouse, Earth, April 1997_

Narcissa Malfoy woke slowly, gently, from her enforced slumber, surrounded by warmth, though she was subconsciously aware that she was most certainly _not_ on her silken sheets. The bed she lay in was hardly _crude_, but it was nowhere near the level of luxury she was accustomed to. It was the unfamiliarity more than the lesser degree of comfort, that nudged her around to a more complete awareness, and she was more than a little shocked at where she found herself to be.

Narcissa's first impression was that she had been abducted and was being held in a muggle warehouse half-refitted to function as living quarters, but a more detailed look around dispelled that notion. First off, there were no windows or doors. Second off, there was _an enormous pile of gold bars _stacked in one corner of the 'warehouse.' Finally, Dobby was sitting on a bed near hers, staring at her.

Seeing Dobby made her think of Harry Potter (_Lord Black, senior of the Potter bloodline_ her subconscious helpfully supplied), thinking of Harry Potter made her think of his odd relationship with her husband, which made her think of the last thing Lucius had done, which had been to _stun_ her. She wasn't certain how she had gone from being in a situation where her home was under attack, to one where she was most likely in one of Lord Black's residences ('safe houses,' she believed the appropriate term for a place like this was), but the fact that her husband was not with her was most distressing.

"Is Lord Black in?" Narcissa slowly asked, turning to face Dobby.

"Harry Potter Sir is sleeping," Dobby said quietly, his luminous eyes fixed on Narcissa, "He was very upsetted when he got back from old-bad-master's house, and Dobby had to use his magic to help Harry Potter Sir sleep properly. _Don't_ wake Harry Potter Sir up."

"I see," Narcissa said quietly with reflexive courtesy, more than a little surprised by the quiet _force_ in the house-elf's voice, "Where am I?"

"Missy Narcissy is in one of Harry Potter Sir's safehouses," Dobby answered, some of the force leaving his voice, "It is where Harry Potter Sir takes peoples he rescues, before he brings them to Crazy-Eye, old-bad-master's house, or the oosans."

"Oosans?" Narcissa asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Peoples from the _U-S-A_," Dobby said with a nod, and what Narcissa could have sworn was a glimmer of a smile.

"I see," Narcissa said with a faint smile of her own, "I don't suppose you could direct me to the loo?"

Dobby silently pointed towards one of the large room's less well-lit corners, and shortly thereafter, Narcissa had gained some privacy, as well as the availability of hot water in a tub. One of the lessons she had learned growing up within the House of Black, both through direct instruction, and indirect teaching through behavioral conditioning, was _do not show weakness_ _to outsiders_. The meaning of 'outsiders' may have changed many times over the years, but she certainly did not hold enough trust in Harry Potter, even if he was Lord Black, to show weakness in front of him.

So, she spent the next three hours shivering in a hot bath, and trying not to think too hard of what might have become of her husband, not to mention the refugees he had been sheltering.

((()))

_Location unknown, time unknown_.

When Seras woke up, she was not in a happy place. There was blood on her face, it felt like her nose might be broken, and she was _very_ thoroughly tied down, onto what felt like a particularly hard lump of wood. It was also pitch black, and while she could hear others moaning quietly in pain, she couldn't see anything.

Almost worse, was the fact that when she tried to call out herself, no sound came from her mouth; she could feel the air moving from her lungs, through her throat, and out her mouth, but no _sound_ came with it. Somehow, the inability to call for help terrified her more than anything else.

((()))

AN: Well. In case it wasn't obvious by this point, I'm now issuing a warning: This fic is about to go to dark places. Me being me, the end of the story isn't going to be a despairing thing, but some people are _not_ going to have happy times, and some people are going to die. There's not much in cannon detailed about what happened in the camps muggle-borns got sent to, I _will_ be going into detail about things like that. It's _not_ going to be pretty.

You have been warned. Twice now, even.


	7. Chapter 6

Hero Harry Chapter Six.

AN: Warning again, unpleasantness portrayed in this chapter, though the more nasty parts don't show up quite yet.

((()))

_Unknown Location, Unknown Time._

It was warm where Seras had been taken, which was good, because even though the air was stagnant, she could feel it against the bare surface of her skin when she moved, meaning that she was also _naked_. After she came to that revelation, which played _heavily_ upon a number of fears she had already harbored relating to the kinds of ill attention her very-developed body could bring her, Seras was _very_ grateful for the darkness around her.

Seras spent her first few minutes awake having a quiet panic attack, struggling to not hyperventilate; it was ultimately someone else gasping that drew her attention from her own plight.

"I don't know if someone erse is dere," A tired, accented voice said, "But if dere is, da sirence effect wiir wear off in a few hours. We can tark once it's done."

Seras forced herself to accept the words as a reason to regain some of her calm, and met with some success. Her breathing eased, at least, Seras wasn't really sure what else she could do with herself at that moment, and thus 'fear and terror' was largely replaced by 'fear and confusion.' Eventually, boredom dragged away the rest of her fear, as she did indeed end spend hours tied down before the silence spell wore off. She didn't know how long it actually took, nor how much time actually passed between the silence wore off; she simply had no external means whatsoever to track the time, and wasn't desperate enough to maintain a mental count, even as inaccurate as that would be.

"I hear new breading," the same accented voice from earlier said, and Seras started violently at the unexpected words, "I am Tabane, can you terr me what de rast date you remember is?"

"Ah," Seras said, taking a moment to refocus on something other than her own wandering thoughts, "April 8th. Why do you ask?"

"Onry way we have to know how rong we've been here," Tabane said sadly, "Since January, we have been here rongest. Erizabet was taken away rittre bit after Emiry came in Janruary fift."

Seras swallowed; that was the most ominous thing she'd ever heard, and she wasn't optimistic enough to think anything _good_ could be meant by the other girl's words, but still, she wanted to be certain.

"What is this place?" Seras asked, not even bothering to hide the quiver in her voice.

"Some magic uses virgins for sacrifices," Tabane said bitterly, "Ris is where rey keep us until it's time for the sacrificing."

((()))

_Hogwarts, Scotland, April, 1997_

In the dead hours of the night, beneath a Gibbous Moon, Harry Potter appeared before the gates of Hogwarts. There was no 'crack' of Apparition, there was no jolt of residual inertia, Harry's intense mastery of mobility-oriented magic had long since rendered such things less than necessary, as he was far from willing to allow speed to compromise subtlety, if he was at all capable of preventing it.

The gates themselves stood tall, silent, nigh-impregnable before him; to his senses they were not simply awash with magic, but comprised more of magic than of stone. Indeed, Hogwarts as a whole, her grounds, the lake, but most of all the castle, were veritably _drowning_ with magic; it was one of twelve locations around the world covered in a true nexus of Leylines, and power had been pooling within her since the Hogwarts Founders had laid the first enchantments and wards upon the land and castle.

When Harry had lived in the castle, his magical 'sense' had been sufficiently attuned to let him make some sense of the thick morass of magic that surrounded him; now, unless he spent _days_ re-acclimating himself, he would be half-blind to individual magic at best, wholly blind at worst.

Harry hated having his combat capacity diminished in any way; being reduced around Alastor Moody was very nearly a worst-case scenario.

Still, he needed in at the Ministry, and Moody was the only man with an infiltrator in the facility, the only _other_ location in the British Isles with wards heavy enough that Harry couldn't crack them. _Yet_, anyways. Fortunately, Hogwarts wards were governed by magic older than its current occupants, and when Harry lay a hand on her gates, the magic within them puled, then opened them before him.

Harry didn't exactly cut the most dramatic of figures, wheeling himself up the grounds to the castle in his wheelchair, but unless he was using it for intimidation, he didn't care much for dramatic effect. And since Moody didn't give two shits about appearance, Harry saw no need to bother appearing to be anything more, or less, than he actually was.

Some minutes later, he reached the large primary doors, and pushed them open with a silent wave of magic, before wheeling himself into the Entrance Hall, and waited. He waited for some time, and found him much harder pressed to maintain his patience than usual, but then, it was not 'usual' for a hundred or more's people's lives to be on the line while he dealt with Moody's paranoia. Usually, it was only a single family.

Eventually, a clanking sound was audible, approaching the entrance hall through one of the side corridors, and one of Hogwarts' many suits of armor marched into the room, carrying a small table with a mirror atop it. Visible on the mirror's surface, was Alastor Moody's grizzled and heavily-scarred face, scowling out at Harry.

"Potter," Moody growled, "What do you want?"

"Your c-contact in the m-ministry," Harry said bluntly, not bothering to hide his stutter, "Malfoy Manor was r-raided, and the refug-gees taken."

"Fudge nabbed Malfoy?" Moody growled.

Harry nodded.

"_Good_," Moody snarled.

((()))

_Detention cell #6, Ministry of Magic, London_, _April, 1997._

"Ah, Lucius, Lucius, Lucius."

The voice was familiar, unmistakably so, and Lucius Malfoy quietly cursed himself again for leaving loose ends.

"Good evening, Cornelius," Lucius said, opening his eyes to find himself in the Ministry's holding spell for 'special' detainees; 'special' in this case meaning 'wealthy person expected to give bribes.'

Cornelius Fudge, a much slimmer, more _fit_ Cornelius Fudge, stood before Malfoy, looking altogether too sure of himself for Lucius' tastes. Lucius himself, was shackled to a heavy wooden chair, something he found altogether disagreeable, though he subtly shifted his posture to 'lounging;' if he was going to be gloated over, he fully intended to show up _Fudge_ in class.

"Surprised to see me?" Fudge said with a self-satisfied smirk, "I'll bet you didn't see this coming when you told me to kill myself a year ago."

"Not particularly, no," Lucius said with a casual shrug, "But then, I never really expected the attack on Hogwarts to succeed, either. Young Mister Potter surprised me, I expected him to focus more on killing, and less on protecting the others."

"You didn't expect me to survive that battle," Fudge growled, his smirk shifting into a scowl, "I'd ask why you decided I needed to die, but I already know."

"Oh?" Lucius said, perfectly-crafted condescending amusement tingeing his voice.

Two years ago, Cornelius Fudge would have been too oblivious to pick up on that tinge; now, he was not.

"Yes," Fudge said, the smirk returning as the shorter (and now that he'd lost weight, _smaller_) man beginning to pace about the lavishly-appointed room, "You know back in the Summer of '95, when you placed me under the Imperious Curse, I was utterly bewildered. There was the confusing nature of the curse itself, of course, but as I'm sure you're aware, protracted exposure to the curse, without repeated castings, eventually allows a sort of clarity of mind."

"Quite," Lucius said with a short nod, his expression clearly conveying that he was humoring Fudge as he would a child, "It's why subjects expected to be at all capable of resisting have the spell regularly refreshed."

"Indeed," Fudge said, waving a hand dismissively, "And it was months before I regained full clarity of mind, though I was, at the time, still unable to throw the curse's effects off," He turned, approaching Lucius again as he continued to speak, "Once I did, I continually asked myself, _why has Lucius done this?_ Were we not friends? Did I not seek your council constantly, and, in retrospect, function in essence as your puppet?"

Fudge stopped directly in front of Malfoy, and glared down at him; his ability to intimidate was dampened somewhat by the fact that he was scarcely a head taller than Lucius was sitting down.

"So," He continued, folding his arms behind his back, "I eventually stopped asking myself what _had_ been, and what _could be_, and what end it was you were working towards."

"I suppose one must find _something_ to do with their idle hours," Lucius said graciously.

Fudge gave him a flat look, before returning to his pacing and continuing to speak.

"Wealth, I almost immediately discarded; your continuing philanthropy, and then the sanctuary you set up for the Muggleborns that you had ordered me to persecute," Fudge paused to glance at Malfoy for a moment, "I never did figure out why you did that, Lucius."

Malfoy just raised an eyebrow at Fudge, who shrugged, then continued.

"Wealth always was something I held in more interest in than you, anyways. I next ruled out prestige, as your standing amongst our peers fell into the dung heap almost immediately after our public 'falling out,' so that, of course, left _power_, which should have been obvious to me from the very start."

He stopped pacing, and turned to stare at Lucius again from a good five (small) paces away.

"You were trying to whip up a power base of your own amongst the mudbloods," Fudge said, glaring at Malfoy, anger livid on his face, "I don't know what turned you into a blood-traitor, Lucius," Fudge gently withdrew his wand from his sleeve, "But your little uprising has failed."

He leveled his wand at his former confidant, and spoke a single word.

"_Crucio._"

((()))

_Hogwarts, Scotland, April, 1997_

"I don't have time for this shit Moody," Harry growled, anger pushing his magic into overriding his stutter without conscious direction, "Malfoy had nearly a _hundred_ refugees on his property."

"Not _my_ problem the idiots didn't do the smart thing," Moody growled, "This is _war_. I don't have the resources to try to crack the Ministry open yet. I need to bleed Fudge more first."

" At least a dozen of them were virgin witches," Harry said flatly.

Moody's countenance became grim, but he said nothing in response.

"You _know_ the bullshit they _could_ get up to with virgin sacrifices," Harry snarled, "My mother went into _great detail_ telling me just what kind of rituals can be performed with either the sacrifice of a virgin, or the sacrifice of someone's virginity. Do you really want Fudge to be backed up by that kind of magic?"

Moody visibly seethed at Harry's words, and long minutes of silence passed as the two silently glared at each other. Eventually though, Moody broke.

"Be at the Ministry's entrance in two hours," He growled, "Get yourself there _quietly_."

((()))

_Unknown Location, Unknown Time._

"Why do they keep us here?" Seras asked quietly, as much resignation as fear in her voice now.

"Dere rituars take certain numbers of virgins," Tabane said quietly, "From what I can tell dree, seven, or dirteen. Some girrs are kirred, some just get raped. Sacrifice of _virginity_, rader, dan of _virgins_. I don't know what kind of rituars invorve da sacrifices, but den, I never cared to know much about dark magic before dis."

"I think we're going to find out about all kinds of things we don't want to know about soon," Seras said sadly, "I guess, even after the attack at the tea shop, what Harry said about this all didn't really sink in for me."

"I don't dinkdat any of us rearry took it seriousry, not untir after Hogwarts was attacked," Tabane said, "I know we didn't."

"You said it before," Seras said, curios now, "'We.' Who is 'we'?"

"Me and my rittre sister," Tabane said bleakly, "She's four."

As she had so recently when she'd spoken with Harry, something seized violently in Seras' chest.

"She's _four_," Seras said, desperate disbelief dominating her voice, "And they've put her in with the virgins for sacrifice, to sacrifice their lives or their _virginity?_"

"Yes," Tabane said bitterly, "I _hate the British._"

((()))

_Detention cell #6, Ministry of Magic, London_, _April, 1997._

Lucius did not scream; his pride would not allow it. Potter had not screamed, even under the combined effect of multiple _Cruciatus_ curses, and thus, Lucius would not. That Fudge's curse was not a patch on what Malfoy had suffered on rare occasion from Voldemort decades ago helped; instead of screaming, Lucius muscles simply locked, and he endured.

And after an indeterminate period of time; _everybody_ experienced a loss of temporal proportion while under _that_ curse for more than an instant, the curse was lifted. Lucius slowly unclenched his jaw, before opening his eyes, and favoring Fudge with a look of profound disinterest.

"Cornelius," Malfoy said, his tone patient, gentle, "I _knew_ what I was setting myself up for when I engaged in this scheme. It went awry _long_ before you survived the assault on Hogwarts; in fact, one could easily say that it began to fall apart from the very beginning."

"Really, Lucius," Fudge said, legitimately confused, and doing a half-way decent job of hiding it, "Now what is it that threw your plans awry from the start?"

"Dumbledore's retirement," Lucius said with a casual shrug, "With him well-removed from Hogwarts, and fully politically active, I expected him to crush you politically, and either take up the-"

"_Crucio!"_ Fudge screamed, enraged by the Malfoy Patriarch's words.

((()))

_Hogwarts, Scotland, April, 1997_

"We're getting the men together Kingsley," Moody growled as he stormed out of the secured cell he used for mirror-meetings, "Potter's going to crack the Ministry open tonight, probably before dawn, and this is a chance we can't afford to miss."

"I thought he was going to get Malfoy out?" Said Kingsley Shacklebolt, one of Moody's primary lieutenants, but Moody could already see his thought processes running.

"There's more to that, and you know it," Moody said gruffly as he lead the large black ex-auror towards the Hufflepuff dorms, "Tell me _why_ Potter's going to crack it."

"If he can get over the ward line in the first place," Kingsley said, his eyes narrowing, "Then his spells and cloak will get him anywhere in the building he wants. None of the interior wards are powerful enough, or subtle enough, to stop someone like him. He's no doubt dug up a complete layout of the Ministry from _somewhere_, but there's no telling which set of cells Fudge will have Malfoy in, not for certain anyways. I'd put my money on Cell Six, since it's closest to the minister's office, and would suit Fudge's ego, but Potter never had much hands-on experience with Fudge, or the Ministry's interior, so he probably won't know that."

"One of his few weak points," Moody said gruffly, "He focuses almost exclusively on combat intelligence, doesn't bother with personal habits, and only picks up psyche profiles with those he encounters personally."

"Aye," Shacklebolt said with a nod, "Which means he'll have to search the whole facility. At that point, he's just as well off fighting his way through the lot of them as he is trying to remain undetected for that long. Fudge's men have gotten smarter."

"Damnably true," Moody snorted, "Even those lugs'll learn if the alternative is a bloody end."

"Aye," Shacklebolt said, scowling as thoughts of men he'd lost flashed through his mind briefly, "Even if he did manage to stealth all the way in, his cloak won't be big enough to cover himself _and_ Malfoy, and Fudge's men won't miss someone under Dissillusionment. Not anymore, anyways."

"Aye," Moody said, nodding again, but waiting for the younger man to come to a final conclusion.

"Which means he'll be tearing down the primary wards," Shacklebolt eventually concluded, "The keystone of which is in the Department of Mysteries. When they go, Dawlish will send half the Aurors and Hitwizards in the Ministry down that hole, and recall everyone else. In closed quarters like that, Potter'll butcher them on the way out; if we're there to put up anti-travel wards of our own, and can entrench in the Atrium..."

"Hammer and the Anvil," Moody growled, a vicious grin twisting his face, "Even if Fudge's shits can restore the wards, we'll be able to retreat directly to the surface, and if they _don't..._"

Moody chuckled; it _wasn't_ a pleasant sound.

"It'll be blood sausages for everyone with breakfast tomorrow."

((()))

_Unknown Location, Unknown Time._

"Um," Seras said awkwardly, "I'm pretty good with reading people, it _is_ dark in here though, but I'm _pretty_ sure that you don't hate me."

"_Gomen_," Tabane said bitterly, "But do you know anything about rituar magic?"

"...No?" Seras said hesitantly, thrown off by the mood swings and language-jumping.

"Rituar magic invorves the use of names," Tabane continued, her tone, if anything, more bitter than it had been before, "Do you know anyting about magic at arr?"

"Not really," Seras said, "Only what I saw in the last few weeks. Wave a wand, say some words, and magic happens."

"For most, yes," Tabane said, "But dose of particular drive, talent, or bote, can rearn to cast magic widout a wand, or widout words. I rearned to do it widout a wand, just using gestures. When dey captured me and my sister, dey took my wand. Have you read any stories about how important names can be to magic?"

"A few," Seras admitted, "The Earthsea quartet, by Ursula Le Guin. Names were really important in that."

"Dey are important for some kinds of magic too," Tabane admitted bitterly, "Whire we were being herd here, waiting for a ritual dat required da sacrifice of sisters, I used my wandress magic to do two tings. First, I put a geas on my sister, preventing her from speaking her name. Den, I wiped her own name from her memory."

Seras' heart had seized before, now it positively convulsed, and she could feel tears beginning to run down her face.

"I'm fourteen," Tabane pressed on, anger rising in her voice again, "Dey didn't tink I could do something rike dat widout a wand, which is why I got away wid it. Dey tried to break into my mind to get her name from me, but I broke two of dere minds before dey gave up. Den dey broke into _her_ mind to try to find it. I told dem she didn't know, but dey did it anyways. She hasn't spoken a coherent word since."

"That's horrib-" Seras began, but Tabane cut her off.

"Den, to keep me from protecting anyone erse de same way," Tabane said harshly, "Dey _cut off my hands._"

Seras broke down into tears, as much because of the malevolence Tabane was directing at her, as because of her story itself.

((()))

_Downtown London, Ministry of Magic surface entrance._

Harry sat, and waited. He had brought his wheelchair, because as much as it galled him, he didn't have the strength to stand unaided without magic, and he couldn't afford to burn magic just to stand while waiting for his contact to appear, not to mention the dangers involved in his magical override. He'd specifically purchased a wheelchair of sufficiently compact construction to allow him to cover it and himself with his cloak however, and so he spent his time silent and invisible, performing weapons checks as he waited.

_Exactly_ two hours after Moody had told Harry to be at the Ministry entrance, a lanky figure in Auror robes stepped out of the phone booth that led into the Ministry, and looked around. It was a waxing moon; according to the security protocol Moody had given Harry, and that Harry suspected _only_ applied to him, showing up _exactly_ on time was the sign he was to look for.

Considering the time constraints he was under, the vanishingly small threat posed to him if the 'Auror,' the miniscule odds that one of Fudge's goons would use the mundane entrance rather than a magical form of travel, and how little Harry lost if this contact fell through, he wasted no time in revealing his presence.

"Moody said you'd be here, Potter," A rough feminine voice called as the woman caught sight of him, "I wasn't sure whether he'd gone bonkers or not."

The woman approached, lowering her hood, and revealing a decidedly... _unattractive_ woman's face. Harry moved forward himself, using both hands to push his chair's wheels, hoping that if this was a setup, she'd try something while his hands were busy, and clearly not holding a wand.

"Glad to see you here though," she continued, her voice softening, smoothing, and rising in pitch, "It's been hell down there the last twelve months, and I'm ready for this shitty job to end."

Her face morphed, mutated, and her hair turned bright pink.

"Wotcher, Harry," Tonks said, greeting him with a bittersweet smile.

((()))

_Detention cell #6, Ministry of Magic, London, April, 1997._

"You know Cornelius," Lucius said, not entirely able to keep the strain out of his voice anymore, "You're showing a rather appalling lack of creativity."

For a moment, Fudge directed a gaze of glaring disbelief at the sweat-stained aristocrat in front of him, before his face contorted into bitter fury again.

"_Creativity?_" Fudge snarled, "I've had you under the Cruciatus for almost _three minutes_ cumulatively, and you criticize me on my lack of _variety?_"

"Quite, old chap," Lucius said, opening up a toothy grin, "You should have seen what the Death Eaters did to the Granger girl, before Potter killed them. They were empty-headed ninnies, but at least _they_ had some creativity."

"_Crucio_."

((()))

_Downtown London, Ministry of Magic._

"Kind of cozy, Harry," Tonks said quietly, and more than a bit self-consciously from just up and behind Harry, "Wish I had a cloak of my own."

They were walking together under Harry's cloak, Tonks wearing it, and wrapping her arms and the cloak around Harry, who stood right in front of her. It was a rather intimate position, and it was only because of her highly morphable anatomy, which she had used to 'reduce' herself up top, that Harry wasn't mashed into her chest.

If he hadn't been so much younger than her, she would have teased him relentlessly about it.

"I'll get you one after this operation is completed," Harry said calmly as he dismantled the simple security ward over the Ministry's primary elevator.

"Thanks Harry," Tonks said brightly, her natural good cheer _almost_ overcoming the bleakness that had set into her life over the last year, "What are we doing down here anyways?"

"I'm going to shatter the primary ward-stone," Harry continued calmly as they passed through the disarmed ward, and into the lift, "Then find your uncle and Fudge, and get Fudge to tell me where they've taken the muggleborns."

"Good," Tonks said, "I don't think that Lucius is here, the people they take in the 'special' raids are never brought to the Ministry. Dolores Umbridge is in charge of the department that handles captures, and the only member of it that's ever... Harry?"

Harry had become _terribly_ still, and after he failed to respond for a moment, she nudged him gently.

"I had been under the impression that between Moody's men and myself, we had stopped nearly all of the raids," Harry said, his voice painfully bland.

"No," Tonks said, bitter fatigue coming through in her voice again, "Not nearly. I've tipped Moody off to as many raids as I've been able, and helped him take down a team or two I was sent on with them, but there's still at least a hundred muggleborns and the survivors reported caught, and sent to Umbridge's people, every month."

"Then we've no time to waste," Harry growled, barely constrained fury in his voice as the lift stopped at the Department of Mysteries floor, and he angrily stormed out of the lift, stripping off the invisibility cloak as he did so, no longer caring about stealth.

Fortunately for them, the floor they were on was abandoned, and Tonks followed Harry, listening to him furiously curse Moody under his breath.

((()))

_Unknown Location, Unknown Time._

"I wish I could give you a hug," Seras said miserably, "But I really doubt that I've got any way of getting rid of these bonds."

"It's okay," Tabane said bitterly, "Da rest of us have been here for monts anyways, we're used to it. How'd you get caught anyways was one of your sibrings a muggreborn?"

"No," Seras said sadly, "I worked at a tea shop and bakery, the shop next door, a bookstore, the owner's daughter was a muggleborn. A whole lot of men in red cloaks, Aurors I was told later, showed up to take her captive, but Harry Potter was having tea at our shop just then."

"HAH!" Tabane bit out a sharp laugh, "Dey told us he died six monts ago, trying to break our spirits. He saved da day, rike a rear hero, right?"

"I... guess so," Seras said hesitantly, "He tried to get the Aurors to stop, but they attacked him isntead. When they refused to surrender, he slaughtered them," Her voice hitched, and began to rise, "And I don't mean 'slaughteed' just like _killed_ them, I mean _slaughtered_ them, they might as well have been laying tied up on the ground with knives to their throats! He _butchered_ them!"

"_Good_," Tabane growled, "Dey need to get a taste of dere own medicine."

((()))

_Detention cell #6, Ministry of Magic, London, April, 1997._

"Doesn't this begin to grow dull, at some point?" Lucius gasped, his body now drenched with sweat, and steeped in fatigue.

"You know," Fudge said, now seated in front of the Malfoy patriarch in an elegangly-carved wooden chair of his own, "This isn't how I expected this to go, but then, I _am_ still learning so very much."

"How very fortunate for you," Lucius said as he straightened up, and began to regain control of his breathing, "Something that Potter taught me, unintentionally on his part, I might add, is that you're never too old, too educated, or too powerful, to keep learning. I'm happy to provide the same service to you, Cornelius."

By the end he managed a smile; it was somewhat blunted by fatigue, but it still held something of his usual refined charisma.

"Oh, you're quite welcome, Lucius old boy," Fudge said with a superior grin, an expression he pulled off half-decently, "If there is one thing that you have taught me, it is that hardship is the greatest motivator to learning."

"Such as learning to overcome the effects of the Unforgivables," Lucius said, beginning to relax into his chair again, "Though only Potter has yet managed the third."

"Indeed," Fudge said with an indolent smile, "Though I'd rather not test that one on myself any time soon," He paused for a moment, his expression turning curious, "Tell me now, why _did_ you turn blood-traitor?"

"It was not a matter of me betraying the pureblood ideals," Malfoy said calmly, "But a matter of my ideals betraying me. You see, of the three most magically powerful Wizards in Britain within the last half-century, only one was a pureblood."

"Oh?" Fudge inquired, "I was under the impression that Dumbledore was a Pureblood, though I suppose he has been around long enough that he could have forged his records and history."

"He is," Malfoy replied politely, "As I had been saying during the press conference that you chose to interrupt the Summer after the Triwizard Tournament, Voldemort, also known as Tom Marvolo Riddle, was actually a half-blood. Specifically the result of rape, when his mother, Merope Gaunt used love potions on his father, Tom Riddle Senior. Shortly after she became pregnant, she stopped dosing him with potions, under the belief that he'd come to truly love her, and he promptly left her. I was unable to find out whether or not Riddle Senior was aware that of the pregnancy, but Tom wouldn't meet his father until sixteen years later, when he arrived at Riddle Manor just outside of Little Hangleton, and murdered the man. Further, Merope died in childbirth, and thus Riddle Junior grew up in an orphanage."

Lucius paused for a moment before continuing.

"In other words, 'Lord Voldemort' was not only of 'impure blood,' he was from an inbred family, grew up totally separated from Wizarding culture until Albus Dumbledore personally visited him in regards to his attendance at Hogwarts, and yet in a crowning irony, was indeed the last individual able to trace direct descent from Slytherin and could speak Parseltongue. Oh, and Potter is, of course, a halfblood as we both well know."

"You honestly believe that, don't you?" Fudge said, disbelief written clear on his face.

"Of course I do," Malfoy said, allowing his mask to slip and his face to display genuine honesty, "I lead the investigation myself, on all _three_ of them. Would you like to hear about Harry Potter's childhood?"

((()))

_Ministry of Magic, Department of Mysteries._

"Harry," Tonks whispered, "How do you know your way around down here so well?"

"Secret," Harry whispered back; Tonks waited for further explanation, but none was forthcoming, so she sighed.

'Down here' was the Department of Mysteries, which they had spent the last five minutes navigating through, steadily moving downward. Tonks hadn't even _known_ there were stairs in the Department of Mysteries, but then, she'd only been in to pick up things like special magical restraints before, and had never passed the room of doors in doing so.

Harry had dealt with the room of doors by the simple expedient of opening them all, then melting them into place; it wasn't subtle, but it didn't activate any wards. Tonks wasn't exactly surprised that no one had thought to ward against that specific occurrence, _she_ certainly wouldn't have expected it. Once they found a chamber beyond the room of doors that had a staircase going down, they'd set off, and Harry had unerringly led them downward ever since.

Tonks hadn't even known that the Ministry went so deep; they had gone down ten stories without encountering anyone since they'd entered the ministry, and she was honestly worried about how many more they'd be descending. Her concerns were interrupted, however, by an encounter with an Unspeakable, the hood of his robes drawn down low enough over his (or her) face that it was completely enshrouded in shadows.

Tonks was fairly certain that some magic was involved with that. She was also pretty sure that she wished Harry hadn't decided to stow the Invisibility Cloak, as a spellfight in the middle of a room full of... red and black box-things, was not something she wanted in the Department of Mysteries.

"You know who I am," Harry said flatly, staring into the depths of the figure's hood, "You can't stop me. Let me pass or die."

"The conflicts of the Ministry at large do not concern the Unspeakables," The figure, a woman apparently, said, "What is your business here?"

"I am going to destroy the Wardstone," Harry said flatly, "It is time for the Ministry to fall."

The Unspeakable abruptly raised her hand, an Ocher spell already springing forth from the wand strapped her wrist; Harry raised a shield without so much as a gesture, and did something with his right hand. Tonks couldn't see what from behind him, but a coin-sized hole appeared in the Unspeakable's face as the back of her head exploded outwards.

She had never seen a more terrifyingly efficient kill in her life; two years ago, she would have been struck speechless. After all that she had seen in the last year though, she merely flinched when a blaring alarm began to sound through the Department of Ministries, and followed Harry as he broke into a run leading further downwards.

((()))

_Detention cell #6, Ministry of Magic, London, April, 1997._

"I don't believe it," Fudge said flatly, "Not even Muggles are that stupid. They would have known what we'd do to them once we found out."

"I extracted the memories from Vernon Dursley's mind _personally_," Malfoy said calmly, "I am _quite_ certain of what I speak. If I hadn't seen Lily Potter return to physical life with my own eyes, I likely would have taken his memories for the deluded ravings of a madman, but the entire manner of her rebirth simply lined up too precisely with what I saw seven years later."

Fudge said nothing, sitting back in his chair and holding his face, and his words, in tight control, something he would not have had the wit to do two years ago.

"You see, Cornelius," Malfoy said calmly, "In the end, it wasn't about you, it wasn't about personal power, it was about _Potter_. The first time I confronted him, as you may well remember, after the Horcrux I unleashed on Hogwarts caused that mess with the Basilisk, I thought he was some foolish child I could crush with little to no effort. In truth, even then, when he had just scarcely begun to step into the adolescent growth of his magic, it was the other way around, he could have crushed _me_ at any time, and further, he _knew it._

"I began to learn otherwise as I looked into his history, and faced my son's defiance of me over the matter of confronting Potter, I am both ashamed and proud to say that Draco saw the Truth before I did. By the time Potter had crushed his competitors for the Triwizard Tournament however, I had learned enough of Potter's past, and how he came to be who and what he was, to stand back and ignore Voldemort's call that night.

"As I watched Potter cut down dozens of my former comrades like the mad dogs that they were, suspicion in my heart became certainty," Malfoy paused for a moment, and leaned forward; his blazing gaze burrowing into Fudge's eyes, the smaller man leaning back subconsciously as he gave way to Lucius dominant force of personality, "'Purity of blood' does not matter, for it does not determine who you are. How one's parents attempt to raise one is not altogether irrelevant, but in the end it matters little, for one's parents do not _control_ a person, however much they may guide him.

"What Potter taught me, above all else, is that _true_ power, is in choosing who one wishes to be, and not allowing _any_ other, regardless of their magic, their relationship to oneself, their history, _anything_, to prevent a man from being who he has chosen to be."

Malfoy leaned back in his seat, spine straight once more, no longer showing any sign of the pain or fatigue Fudge's curse had wrought on him earlier, now once more the very image of the proud, unconquerable aristocrat. The Minister of Magic, on the other hand was now shaking slightly, breathing hard, and clearly on edge.

"And who have you chosen to be?" Fudge demanded harshly, angry at the fear Lucius had managed to inspire in him, in spite of his utterly dominant position.

Lucius just tilted his head back, and allowed a lazy smile to spread across his face.

Fudge snarled and leapt to his feet, raising his wand to curse his old 'ally' once more, but was cut off by a blaring alarm sounding.

"Why don't you ask young Lord Black?" Lucius smirked, "I'm sure he'll be _thrilled_ to have a conversation with you when he arrives."

((()))

_Ministry of Magic, Department of Mysteries._

In the end, the Department of Ministries had extended down thirteen floors from the bottom of the rest of the ministry, a magically-relevant prime number, and the large ward-stone they sought sat in an open space effectively one 'floor' below that, putting it twenty-three floors below the surface, another prime number.

Tonks appreciated the traditional significance thereof; Harry didn't care about whether or not a number was considered more or less magical, unless it had practical, direct application that he could put to use. He _did_ care about the fact that the Wardstone was so heavily enchanted and entrenched in magic, that the spells he had attempted to destroy it with had failed, and detonators for the C-4 he had brought didn't function so close to such intense magic. Further, while he could physically place the explosive on the ward-stone the same protection that prevented him from simply destroying it with magic, prevented him from detonating the explosives with his magic thus far, as the closer a spell sent with destructive intent came to the wardstone, the more its force was eroded, until it could no longer provide enough to detonate the explosive.

Harry was an intensely powerful and skilled Wizard, for his age he was _absurdly_ powerful, but the Wardstone below him had been crafted by cunning enchanters centuries ago, and had been drawing power from the leyline it rested on more than thirty times longer than he had been alive.

"Shit," Tonks hollered over the still-strobing alarm, "This thing just doesn't want to die."

"I am grudgingly forced to admit this is substantially more difficult than I had expected it to be," Harry ground out, "It appears I shall have to utilize more involved and riskier means, which, unfortunately, will take some time."

He suited actions to words, retrieving a pouch from the combat-harness beneath his robes and beginning to pour one-pound bags of a powdery, metallic substance out of it.

"How can I-_shit_," Tonks cut herself off as she cocked her head to the side, "There's footsteps coming down the stairs, I'll go buy some time Harry, _work fast_."

Harry turned to face her, opening his mouth to protest as habitual patterns of behavior demanded _he_ be the one to put himself on the line, but Tonks was already halfway across the the bare chamber the ward-stone rested beneath, and Harry realized that she most likely didn't know how to use Thermite properly. Snarling in silent frustration, Harry hurled one of the one-pound packets down onto the ward-stone, then sent a jet of flame down to ignite it. Just as with the C-4, the ward-stones defences prevented him from generating enough heat to ignite the substance.

An animalistic growl clawed its way out of his throat, and his eyes narrowed. He retrieved a second magically-expanded pouch from within his robes, and with a flick of each wrist, both were set to hovering, mouths' wide-open, over his hand. A sharp gesture, directed towards the ward-stone from each hand sent a torrent of plastic wrapped packages pouring down into the pit beneath him. A minute and a half later, a half-ton of C-4 was mixed with a half-ton of Thermite, the mound tall enough that its top peaked up over the edge of the pit at its highest point; the ward-stone was totally buried.

Harry returned the two pouches to his combat harness, and drew a shrunken device from a third; unshrinking it revealed a modified large-scale squirt-gun. Harry spent ten seconds squirting enough napalm into the pit to pool around the explosive and incendiary packages piled right against its edge, before creating a thin trail of semi-liquid accelerant trailing halfway back to the stairs. Reshrinking the squirt-gun with a gesture then stowing it, he gave his handiwork a quick once-over to search for any obvious flaws, then ignited the end of the flame-trail, and sprinted for the stairs.

Sixteen seconds later, he reached Tonks, who had holed up just beneath one of the flights of stairs, and was attempting to cast a curse upward at a half-dozen robed figures with a wand held in an arm that had blood literally boiling out of a cursed wound all along its length. Harry prepped a portkey to teleport her to Dobby's 'infirmary' the instant the wards dropped, and slapped it onto her back as he ran up the stairs past her, drawing spellfire from her towards himself.

Four and seven tenths of a second after the Portkey came into contact with Tonks' skin, the C-4 detonated. Tonks was roughly 569 feet from the epicenter of the blast, and C-4 detonates at an explosive velocity of 26,550 feet per second; the blast struck her position two hundredths of a second after explosive ignition was achieved. At that time, there were two Wizards in the world skilled enough with magical teleportation techniques to create a Portkey capable of triggering and moving her in that time-span; fortunately for her, Harry was one of them.

Unfortunately for her, the destruction of such potent wards and their focus was not without consequences, and the massive wash of distorted and unfocused magic threw her portkey hopelessly off target; Harry would not discover until hours later that she never reached Dobby's care.

((()))

C-4 possesses an explosive velocity roughly 15% higher than that of TNT, and significantly higher energy density; Harry detonated half a ton of the substance in an enclosed space underneath London. Its effective yield was just short of a kiloton, a level of energetic explosiveness only ever achieved in weapons tests, fuel-air bombs, and nuclear weapons; if the detonation had occurred above ground, a small mushroom cloud would have formed. As it was, the detonation shattered every single floor of the Department of Mysteries, and only the physics involved in force transmission, the fact that the Department of Mysteries rested a good sixty feet laterally out from beneath the rest of the Ministry of Magic, and secondary wards protecting the structural integrity of the Ministry of Magic prevented the rest of the subterranean structure from being annihilated.

On the surface, London itself was subject to a low-strength trembler that left its inhabitants under the impression they'd just been subjected to an earthquake.

((()))

Outside the phone box that served as the surface entrance of the Ministry, fifty-some Witches and Wizards felt the earth tremble beneath them, and the two charged with monitoring the wards turned to Alastor Moody and nodded.

"Potter's done it then," Moody growled, reaching up to place his bowler hat firmly over his balding scalp, "Let's go."

((()))

End chapter.

((()))

AN: And the plot finally starts kicking off for reals. I've been looking forward to this, and now things _get real_, as the saying goes.


	8. Chapter 7

Hero Harry, Chapter Seven.

WARNING: Grisly bits in parts of this chapter. As in the _really_ nasty bits. You'll be able to see them coming before they get _too_ bad, and can skip to the bottom of the segment if you so desire.

((()))

_Beneath the Ministry of Magic, London, April, 1997._

Harry had gone to some lengths testing his barrier before that he knew his mother and Hermione would not have approved of, and as such possessed a basic familiarity with what it was like to be 'blown up' when one was, more or less, invulnerable. The overwhelmingly powerful blast he'd engineered underneath London was scarcely comparable; his magical barrier, which as best as Hermione and his mother had been able to determine, operated on the principle of 'absorb any force that would stress body beyond its tolerances,' prevented him from taking any actual damage from the blow, but it was still intensely disorienting.

Once he shook off the immediate effects of the blast and picked himself up, he found himself to be in a... _troublesome_ position. He stood in a rockslide of rubble on the edge of a shaft or ruin; the entire Department had been wrecked, and worse, a great deal of very experimental magical artifacts, spells-in-progress, and devices had been destroyed in the blast. A writhing, boiling mass of visible multi-colored magic frothed in the core of the cavernous hollow created by Harry's explosives, too thick for him to see through. Discharges of energy slammed into the walls or floor every few seconds, warping, twisting, _changing_ what was struck; Harry's barrier had already been weakened by the blast more than any time since he had hit puberty, and he had no wish to see how it would hold up against the chaotic magics above him.

He attempted to apparate, but to his frustration, discovered that somebody had raised another set of wards between the minute or so when he had been largely incapacitated by the blast. With the demented flux of magic above him clouding his senses, he couldn't tell who it was, but right now, that didn't really matter. Now, he had to get up to the Ministry proper without getting injured or killed by the unintended results of his own demolition.

It was time to think outside of the box.

((()))

_Detention Cell #6, Ministry of Magic._

When the blast struck, it knocked half a dozen pieces of furniture in the cell over, and Fudge off his feet; Malfoy's chair was bolted to the floor, and he was merely thrown against his bonds. Lucius took the opportunity to indulge in a little bit of internal gloating as he lounged back in his chair again, enjoying the sight of Cornelius frantically scrabbling for his wand, which he had dropped, and then stumbling to his feet.

"I dare say young Lord Black has come calling," Lucius said, his tone positively _jovial_, "I'd suggest you put the tea on, as he isn't partial to alcoholic beverages. Doesn't like putting himself at a disadvantage, you see."

"We'll just see about that," Fudge snarled as he stomped over to the cell's only (non-secret) exit, "There's a _reason_ he hasn't dared to attack the seat of my power before, and he was a fool to do so now," He paused to hurl the cell's door open, before barking at the pair of Hitwizards outside, "Call in the dayshift, hell, call in _everyone_ who's off-shift, I don't care if they're an Auror, a Hitwizard, or a Clerk! Potter's here, and we're taking him down!"

"Yessir," One of the Aurors replied with a sharp nod, before stalking off towards the nearest Floo.

"And you," Fudge said, focusing on the other man, "Go find out what it was Potter blew up. If he's blasted a hole right down to the Ministry Atrium from the surface, we'll need it fixed immediately, or the Obliviators will be busy for _weeks_."

"I'm impressed, Cornelius," Malfoy said with a benevolent smile as the Minister of Magic slammed the cell door shut again, "You've come a long way since the old days. Two years ago, you'd have spent five minutes dithering before you decided who to ask for advice."

"I've learned a great deal since you abandoned me," Fudge said with a snarl as he stalked back over to where Malfoy was restrained, "Not least of which is that _I never needed you in the first place_."

"Come now Cornelius!" Malfoy said, his smile turning to a brilliant grin, with just the _slightest_ hint of a predatory edge around it, "If I'd not seen fit to put you through a few rough spots here and there, where would you ever have come up with this marvelous drive to actually accomplish something!"

Fudge's expression turned positively murderous, and Lucius could see in the shorter man's eyes that he _knew_ Malfoy was right, and he _hated_ it. Lucius drew great pleasure from that fact.

"_Crucio!_" Fudge snarled again.

((()))

_?, ?_, _April, 1997._

The portkey expelled Tonks violently, the wash of chaotic magic that had hurled it off course sympathizing with certain conceptual existences, and repelling itself from certain other conceptual existences, to deposit her in a location that would be hard for anyone to think of as anything other than random. The force of the transportation magic slammed her into the ground hard enough that if she'd still had bones, they would have broken.

Combined with the curses, bone-shattering, blood-boiling, organ-liquefying, that she had already been struck with before Harry's portkey had whisked her away, the chaotic miasma of magic had _not_ been kind to her. Any wizard or witch not a Metamorphmagus, or perhaps preternaturally skilled Animagus, would have already been slain by the gruesome mixture of hostile magic inflicted on young Nymphadora Tonks, but she was not one to die easily.

A curse had been attempting to liquefy her bones and turn them into acid; she had responded by turning her bones into cartilage, and expelling those in her leg too caught up in the curse to save. She had made extensive study of the human body, in both non-magical and magical 'sciences' to better understand her abilities, and as such was well-aware that she couldn't try to expel all her blood without killing herself, but improvised by filtering the boiling blood either out through the cursed gash in the arm that had first taken the curse, or through her lymphatic system so that it no longer registered as 'blood.' It hadn't removed the curse, but it'd stopped its spread; she was still suffering tissue damage in her arm from the heat, but she wasn't dying.

The organ-liquefying curse, on the other hand, was a wholly different problem. Guided by the magic of the Witch who had cast it, it didn't consider her skin to be an organ, as most magicals didn't, and it had only struck her in the hip, rather than the chest, but that was bad enough. The first to go had been her ovaries and other reproductive organs, and if she hadn't been damn busy not dying, she'd have cried over it as she wasn't sure she could re-create it from scratch well enough to ever have children. Her bladder had followed more or less immediately thereafter, as her large and small intestines began liquifying. The real danger in the loss of foot upon foot of intestine, came from their contents. The gelatinous remnants of her organs was bad enough, the food-waste and other byproducts that had been let free to float around loose in her abdominal cavity was a major case of blood poisoning only minutes away.

And to add insult to injury, the soup that an increasing proportion of her body volume was turning into had begun to leak out of the available exit vectors in her groin and backside; she frankly did not have the concentration to spare on keeping control of those muscles and compensate for rigid bone turning into more flexible cartilage.

On the bright side, as the cursed gash in her left arm both refused to close, and refused to allow her to expel the blood carrying the blood-boiling curse through, her relaxed waste-chutes offered an alternate exit. She was steadily converting body-mass from muscle-tissue to blood so that she could keep pumping it into her arm, where it was steadily converted to steam, and the cursed wound allowed the _steam_ out, but the curse itself remained. On the not-so-bright side, she didn't have the concentration to spare to shift her heart out of the way, and as such, trying to move the boiling curse through her chest to reach the currently-available exit ports would probably kill her.

Time wasn't a luxury she had either, so she was forced to make the unpleasant decision to open a wound of her own in order to expel the blood-boiling curse, so that she could turn her full attention to the organ-liquefying curse, which was starting to get into her right, something that was a _lot_ harder for her to recreate, and if she lost both, that would kill her a lot faster than the lack of a complete digestive tract.

Tonks _hated_ tearing her own flesh apart; she knew it was possible, but supremely doubted that there was another person in the world as intimately familiar with, and attached to, their flesh as she was. She had learned very well in the last year, however, _not to hesitate_. Life was rough and the world was full of shit, and if you let enough fall on you, you'd suffocated.

So she tore open a hole the size of her fist in her bicep, and expelled most of the remaining flesh in that part of her arm, losing a good five pounds of muscle, cartilage, and blood in the process.

The curse went with it though, so she counted it as a win, even if she was distinctly light-headed now, while she closed up the wound.

Two of the three immediately life-endangering threats defeated, Tonks turned her focus towards her abdomen, and nearly wept at what she discovered. Her right kidney was mostly gone, and _there was no time_. Sobbing quietly, she tore the kidney out, widened the orifices in both her groin and ass, the with a wave of magic more instinctive than deliberate, flushed the soup that occupied her abdomen out of her body, the pressure it was expelled under causing it to erupt forcefully from beneath her shredded robes.

During the entire process her body would have, to an outside observer, appeared an absolutely horrific mass of writhing flesh, as she redistributed body mass from the muscle in her limbs into her core, as a wound 'spontaneously' appeared in an arm that was already charred and 'bleeding' steam, only for a mass of pulped tissue to erupt from said wound. The forceful eviction of cursed bodily fluids, both naturally and unnaturally produced, was just the aromatic icing on the cake, the smell a horrific mixture of faeces, urine, and more obscure odors.

"Where the slag did all this excrement come from? And I just had my windshield cleaned too!"

Unfortunately for Tonks, she hadn't thought to close up the _many_ blood vessels still feeding into her abdomen before purging it, and the pressure differential once the cursed fluids were expelled caused blood to rapidly flow into her empty belly, causing her blood-pressure to plummet. She desperately started sealing off blood-vessels as her level of awareness faded; fortunately, she had _extensive_ experience with this, and was able to do so even with her faculties considerably debilitated.

In the end she managed to close off all the blood vessels in her abdomen even avoiding cutting off circulation to her legs, before loosing what little awareness she had of the world around her, barely enough to feel the concrete her wasted body rested on, and passed out altogether.

She had forgotten about the cursed gash on her arm though, and it still bled freely.

((()))

_Ministry Atrium, London, April 1997._

The Atrium had been turned into an armed camp within a minute of the Wards going down, and a fully entrenched position within three. Moody's men had brought shrunken portable concrete barricades in with them, each man carrying a full dozen of them, and had set themselves up with superior lanes of fire and cover as soon as they had arrived. Immediately thereafter a detachment of eight men, over ten percent of Moody's total force, used the Floo to access the Floo Office itself; one of the most crucial pieces of information Tonks had provided for Moody was that the Ministry hadn't warded its internal Floo network the way it had the rest of Britain's.

Once the Floo Office and the fire/teleportation magic nexus therein had been seized, Floo access to anything and anywhere in all of Great Britain was shut down, save a route for the eight-man team to retreat to the Atrium should their position become untenable. While that team was occupied, a third was thoroughly trapping the phone-booth surface access to the Ministry, to prevent reinforcements from being able to flank Moody's force within the Atrium itself.

The first Ministry employee, a secretary, tried to pass through the atrium eighty-seven seconds after Moody's team arrived, she was gunned down by a burst of fire from a FN P90. It was nearly another minute before someone else arrived, and the hapless clerk was cut down just as efficiently. It would be nearly five minutes before the first Aurors arrived, but the fifty-some men and women with Moody had a clarity of commitment, and of orders.

_Nobody_ who still worked for Fudge would be granted quarter; no prisoners would be taken, they had been tried in absentia, and all would be executed.

((()))

_Location Unknown, Time Unknown._

"What was life like for you, before the war?" Seras asked quietly.

Tabane didn't answer Seras immediately, and in fact was silent for so long that the older girl began to think she had asked something inappropriate, but she _did_ eventually respond.

"Different," Tabane said quietly, her voice filled with the distraction of deep reminiscence, "Our parents worked for da Japanese government, wourd go visiting Japanese embassies in each country, make sure buirdings and grounds were werr-maintained. Dey arso wourd be checking to see if dere was corruption amongst de Ambassador's staff, but dat part was secret. My sister and I got to go to arr kinds of countries, and see arr kinds of interesting tings. I tink our favorite was Austraria, because tings weren't actuarry corrupt at dat embassy, so dere was no arguing or anyting, and we went on vacation for a mont before we reft. Have you ever been to Austraria?"

"I've never even been to Ireland," Seras admitted, "Though I've been to Scotland and Wales a few times, that only sort of counts as leaving the country, I think. The people are different, but not too much, and you don't even go very far."

Silence passed between them for a time.

"What about you?" Tabane asked, "What do you do before da war?"

"I'm seventeen," Seras said quietly, "I was finishing up school, getting ready to go the police academy, I wanted to be a policeman like my father."

"He must be very proud of you," Tabane said hesitantly, "Was... was he dere when dey took you?"

"No," Seras said, shaking her head and not quite managing to keep the hitch out of her voice, "My dad's been dead for a while now. He was torn between being proud, and wanting me to pick something safer to do, while he was still alive."

Silence again.

"You didn't say anyting about your mother," Tabane said quietly.

"She died when I was very young," Seras said wistfully, "I never really got a chance to know her."

Tabane had nothing to say to that, and silence ruled between them until Seras slept.

((()))

_Detention Cell #6, Ministry of Magic._

Directly beneath the chair on which Lucius Malfoy was seated, a small crack in the cell's carpeted stone floor appeared. Lucius and Cornelius were both far too occupied by Fudge's curses to notice when a small hole was cut in the carpet, and a fiber-optic cable was extended through it.

Seven seconds later, Harry Potter smashed through the stone floor of the luxurious cell, coming up directly beneath Fudge. To Harry's great disappointment, the Minister was wearing Dragonhide armor beneath his robes, and survived the stone shrapnel Harry's explosive entrance spattered him with; the man was still knocked flying however, and landed directly on top of Malfoy.

"And now Cornelius," Lucius said calmly as he seized Fudge's robes with his bound hands, and glared the man directly in the eyes, before his tone turned vicious, "We shall discuss the location of your 'reeducation' camps."

Lucius was not a master Legilimens, and not even Voldemort had been able to initiate an assault on a person's mind merely through eye contact, but now, Lucius smashed his forehead into Cornelius own, and in doing so achieved _skin_ contact with the Minister. His mastery of wandless magic was not all that he wished it to be, but it was sufficient for _this_, and the Malfoy Patriarch began a vicious assault on Fudge's mind.

Fudge was not wholly defenseless; he had come a long way from the dithering fool he had been when he first became Minister, but Malfoy had not been stagnant either, and he had been the stronger in the first place. His mental probe carved through Cornelius' mind like a woodsman's ax through a man's flesh; it was not swift, it was not pretty, but it was _very_ effective, and left everything it touched in bloody ruins. Malfoy was interested in, and discovered, all activities of consequences that Fudge had initiated and been involved with in the last two years, most of which he was already aware of, but more important to him, was leaving Fudge's mind a ruined shambles, so that Potter would never learn the part he had played in starting the war.

It took seven full minutes for Lucius to finish raping Fudge's mind in as deliberately destructive a manner as he was capable, and when he was finished, the Minister of Magic was little more than a drooling vegetable.

Lucius shoved the man's limp body off of himself, and looked up to see Potter standing at his cell's door staring at him, a pool of blood on the floor near his feet slowly creeping into view from beyond Malfoy's line of sight.

"Good evening Harry, how kind of you to come calling," Lucius said cordially, nodding respectfully to the shorter Wizard, "I thought I'd see you this evening."

"'Evening Lucius," Harry replied with a cordial nod of his own, "Did you get the location of the camps from him?"

"There's only one camp, Harry," Lucius replied, "And I know _precisely_ where it is. I don't suppose I could trouble you to untie me? My control of wandless magic isn't all that it could be, and I'm afraid it'd take me a few minutes to do so myself."

A silent gesture from Harry removed Lucius' bonds.

"Thank you kindly," Lucius said, before standing up and stretching, "I don't suppose you found my wife back at the manor?"

Harry retrieved an elegant ring from his pocket, and held it up for Lucius to see.

"Her wedding ring led me to yours."

"Excellent," Lucius said, smiling pleasantly as he picked up Cornelius wand, then messily removed the man's head with a silent, but powerful, blasting curse.

Harry raised an eyebrow as gore splattered the room, another wave of his hand preventing himself from being caught in the spray.

"I have a general policy regarding the _Cruciatus_ curse," Malfoy said calmly as he moved towards the door, not bothering to clean bits of Fudge off of himself as he did so, "If a man uses it on me repeatedly, I kill him. I already have everything you or I are likely to need from his mind, so I saw no reason to leave loose ends."

"I suppose that is fair enough," Potter admitted.

"Now," Malfoy said, smiling again, "I do believe my wife must be in quite a state, I would be most obliged if you could take me to her post-haste."

((()))

_Beneath the Ministry of Magic, London._

"Well," A masked Unspeakable said as he stared down into the chaotic flux of magic filling the cavern that _used _to be the Department of Mysteries, "_Shit_."

"You can say that again," One of the Unspeakables with him, this one a female said.

"Well," The first Unspeakable said, "Shit."

Three of the five other Unspeakables with him smacked him over the back of the head.

"That's about three hundred years worth of research gone," Another Unspeakable grumbled, "Or the hard materials anyways. How the hell did Moody get somebody down here to do this anyways?"

"I doubt it was Moody," The woman said, "He's too cautious to try something like this without an ace in the hole."

"Which means Potter," The fourth Unspeakable said, "The use of muggle explosives makes it more or less a certainty. Moody's men use explosives sometimes, but only Potter has access to enough to do something like _this_. The Director will _not_ be pleased."

"Yeah," The first Unspeakable said, "And the Queen won't either. I'll go to the Clocktower to deliver the news myself, they _know_ I've been advocating stricter security measures here for years, and the real fault lies with the people who were on-shift anyways. They _probably_ won't kill me."

"We'll see what we can recover," The female said with a sigh, "And record what we can of that flux mass. Good luck."

The first unspeakable eyed the catastrophe of exploded, warped, and twisted material they were going to try to 'recover' useful data from, and winced.

"Good luck to you too, you'll need it."

((()))

_Ministry Atrium, London, April 1997._

In the time since Harry had passed through the Atrium on his way down to the Department of Mysteries, less than an hour in total, the Atrium had turned into a bloody hellhole. Moody's men had the advantage of prepared positions, solid discipline, and a willingness to use firearms and other non-magical weaponry. The Ministry's personnel had the advantage of Dragonhide armor, which made a _great deal_ of difference, and once a team of Hitwizards blasted their way through the traps Moody's people had set, they held the advantage of numbers, and holding flanking positions over their enemies.

The arrival of Harry Potter (and Lucius Malfoy), as it so often had in the last two years, completely changed the dynamic of the fight. Harry had seriously considered simply using the tunneling technique he had learned from Susan Bones to leave the Ministry via more direct means, but he wished to know who had raised new Wards against Apparition and Portkeys, even if he was mostly certain it had to be Moody's men. When he discovered that Moody himself was present, along with what Harry suspected was almost the entirety of the man's followers, it wasn't difficult to decide that he would rather intervene, than just leave the Ministry personnel and Moody's men to kill each other.

A _lot_ of people would die that way, and a great number of bodies in various states of mutilation were already spread around the Atrium.

Harry withdrew his wand from its pouch on his combat harness, and tapped it to his throat, quietly whispering '_Sonorus'_. He did not need the wand, but when using as much power as he just had on the spell, an aid in control was rarely a bad idea.

"SILENCE," Harry shouted, drawing the battle to a screeching halt as much because of threat-recognition relating to those involved identifying him, as to his sheer volume. "CORNELIUS FUDGE IS DEAD. THIS WAR NEED NOT CONTINUE."

For nearly a full minute, none present said anything, the bloodied combatants thinking furiously, glancing between their allies, their foes, and the newly-arrived Malfoy and Potter pair.

Then one of the Aurors hurled a silent Killing Curse at Harry, and the firefight erupted anew. Scowling, Harry directed one of the nearby dead bodies into the path of the Killing Curse, then initiated a broad area-of-effect counterattack.

Harry was quite familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of Dragonhide armor, seeing as how it was something he wore more or less constantly himself. It was extremely resistant to spellfire, couldn't be pierced by any mundane weapon that was actually intended for use against a human target, and were practically impervious to damage from fire or heat. Unfortunately, Dragonhide was _not_ a rigid-body material, and such a thing as a 'Dragonhide helmet' more or less did not exist.

To take advantage of these weaknesses, Harry, idly swatting aside curses with silent gestures, focused his attention on the far wall of the Atrium.

"ACCIO."

The wall itself was not part of the bedrock that the Ministry had been dug into, but a solid slab of Marble installed to contribute to the Atrium's grandeur. Not even Dumbledore would have had the power to tear the bedrock along the entire wall apart, but Harry was more than capable of moving a measly few tons of Marble. With a resounding _crack_, the entire wall ripped free of its moorings, and tore across the Atrium towards Harry.

Moody's men took cover behind their concrete barricades, and were merely bombarded by bits of rubble that crashed over the blocks of concrete. The Ministry personnel, on the other hand, were caught out in the open, and as the wall swiftly ground across the room, they were swept up in its path. Some attempted to blast holes in the wall, though none created a large enough gap for them to slip through, some attempted to run though none were fast enough, some stood and gaped in shock, and two Aurors managed to dive out of the way into the fireplaces alongside the Atrium's wall.

The Fountain of Magical Brethren was crushed and ground into dust; some of those who fell to the wall's path suffered a similar fate, ground into bloody smears beneath the stone edifice's passage, others had their skulls cracked or necks broken when the Marble slammed into them, but most survived, if heavily injured, simply swept along in the wall's movement. As the wall neared the entrance to the Atrium Harry and Lucius stood within, Harry had pity on his foes, and brought the wall to a screeching halt before it crashed into the wall it had stood opposite of prior to Harry's spell, bringing it to a screeching, grinding halt, and allowing those that had survived to fall to the floor, still alive.

He did send a blasting curse into the head of the man who'd cast the Killing Curse at him, however.

Another, far more powerful, blasting curse tore a hole in the wall for Harry and Lucius to pass through, and had the unintended side effect of knocking the wall over backwards, rendering the hole itself moot.

"I am sorry to say, Lord Black," Lucius said gravely, "That I do not believe I shall ever hire you to decorate Malfoy Manor."

Harry's head turned just enough to allow him to favor the Malfoy Patriarch with a flat glare. Lucius simply raised an eyebrow in response.

"I'm done with this place," Harry said flatly, "Let's go."

Malfoy nodded, and they both strode over the bloody collapsed wall towards the exit, ignoring the struggling survivors they left behind.

"Moody!" Harry called as they moved past Mad-Eye's barricade, "Lucius recovered where Fudge has been sending the Muggleborn. I'll be striking tomorrow, you know how to contact me if you wish to join in."

No more words passed before Malfoy and Potter reached the surface of London.

((()))

_Location Unknown, Time Unknown._

"Oy, Tabane!" Another voice called, startling Seras into consciousness even though her voice was muffled, "You awake yet?"

"Yes!" Tabane called back, "New prisoner in my cerr, She was daken on April eight, and saw Harry Potter arive recentry!"

"Oh?" The voice called back, "I'm Beatrice, who're you?"

"Seras," Seras replied hesitantly, "Where are you?"

"One of the other cells," Beatrice said cheerfully, "There's at least a dozen down here, and there's only room for two of us to a cell. They put Tabane's sister in here with me, so I talk with her a lot. Some of the girls don't really talk at all, probably some of psychological breakdown or something."

"Not you though?" Seras said, still hesitant.

"Nope!" Beatrice said brightly, "Way I look at it, the food's shit, but I've been meaning to lose weight since I was twelve, the dark sucks, but I can't really do anything about it, and they may plan on raping or killing us now, but for once being 'ugly' has been an advantage, 'cause they've already taken the pretty ones, and the fact that none of the boys back home would touch me is why I'm still alive."

Seras shivered, fairly certain that she was one of the 'pretty ones,' which did not bode well for her continued survivability.

"I _was_ asleep," A new voice cut in, clearly irritated, "But now you've woken me up, _again_, just to imply that my appearance is wanting, _again_. Will you _ever_ learn tact?"

"Nope!" Beatrice said cheerfully, "Will you ever stop being a snooty bitch?"

"The oder gir-, ah _girrr_, ah, _gir-rul_, is Patricia," Tabane said quietly, "She says she is a nobre, Batrice rikes to argue wit her about it."

"So I see," Seras replied, as the argument between the girls began to increase in pace, and _volume_.

((()))

_Underground Safehouse, Earth, March 1997. _

Harry was not the best at reading people, but when he saw the look in Narcissa Malfoy's eyes upon arriving with Lucius, he immediately knew it would be best to give them privacy for their reunion. Especially considering the tendency they shared towards not displaying emotions in front of others.

"I have preparations to make," He said cordially to Lucius, "This place is unplottable, but the Wards will allow you to Apparate out, so be careful if you choose to leave. I should return by this time tomorrow."

And then he silently Apparated out, leaving the two to themselves. He reappeared in a safehouse nearly identical to the one he had just left, save that it was rather obviously less lived-in, and immediately turned his mind to his next task.

"Dobby," He called, and turned to face the house-elf that had just appeared beside him, "How is Tonks?"

"Tonks?" Dobby said, "Dobby is not knowing how the Tonks is, he has not seen any Tonks for months."

"Shit," Harry breathed quietly, going over the chain of events in the Department of Mysteries that he had last seen her doing.

There had been no body, but then, all he had found of the Unspeakables that had been fighting with her was a bloody paste, so it was entirely possible that the Portkey had failed to get her out, and she had died. It was also possible that the Portkey had misfired, and taken her to an unknown location; with that in mind, he withdrew his Invisibility Cloak, and immediately began picking it over for pink hairs. Dobby joined in the search without being asked, and in less than four minutes, found a hair, and silently handed it to Harry.

Harry immediately pulled out his wand, wrapped the hair around it, and cast a tracking charm. The wand twisted, spun, then pointed directly towards London.

Harry wrapped the invisibility cloak around himself, then Apparated out immediately.

((()))

_Frewin Street, London, April 1997._

Harry appeared silently, and swiftly inspected his surroundings. There were no bodies visible, but there was a puddle of putrescent goop spread across part of the street; closer inspection revealed blood and partially-digested food within.

This did not inspire Optimism within Harry.

Growling, he cast the tracking charm again, and it pointed directly at the puddle. Thinking furiously about what such a result could mean, Harry inspected the mess more closely, picking out what looked like a half-melted kidney near the center of the pile. Making a snap decision, he vanished the entire mess, then cast the tracking charm again.

Nothing.

"Shit," Harry swore, then cast a number of detection charms, including a very specific one designed to detect the thermal imprint of recent footprints.

Aside from his own, nothing warm-blooded has passed down the street within the last six to eight hours. Harry swore again, surveyed the location again, attempted the tracking charm again, then silently disappeared.

((()))

_Underground Safehouse, Earth, March 1997._

"Dobby," Harry said the instant he returned, "Please keep a lookout for news reports regarding recovered bodies or rogue cold-blooded predators in London for the next few days."

"Yes Harry Potter sir," Dobby said nodding gravely, "Is Miss Tonksy dead?"

"I don't know," Harry said grimly, "And I don't have the right magic to try to track her. Either she died, she's behind some sort of Ward, or something completely beyond me has happened. I'm going to need to call in somebody with more expertise."

And then he abruptly realized that he had just recently agreed to allow his friends from Hogwarts to accompany him back to Britain just days prior.

"Merlin," He breathed, "I'm not sure if this is a happy coincidence, or God giving me a poke in the ribs," He took a deep breath, and finally let the tight magical control he'd held his body in for hours lapse, "Dobby," He continued quietly, "I'm going back to Puerto Rico to collect the others. I'm not going to be able to handle this search, or this raid, alone."

And he disappeared once more.

((()))

_Unplottable location within London, April, 1997._

"The Director wishes to hear your report on this matter _personally_," a research assistant that had not given the Unspeakable his name said, "You are to report to him immediately."

The Unspeakable shook from fear; literally. He had never even _heard_ of someone being called to report to the Director personally, much less do so himself. Trying to deny the summons would be beyond monumentally stupid though, and deliberately delaying his arrival almost as foolhardy, so he started down the corridor towards the Director's personal workshop, then after a moment's thought, broke into a run.

The Director was known for being literal, and the Unspeakable was nowhere near important enough to try to put a thing like 'dignity' before haste at a time like this. The vault-like door to the Director's workshop opened as he approached.

"Come in," The Director's deep voice called, "And tell me everything that you know regarding the destruction of your research facility."

The Unspeakable skidded to a stop as he entered, tore his eyes away from the many, _many_ different things within the workshop which tried to capture his curious eyes, and immediately began delivering his full, if somewhat brief, report of everything he knew regarding his department's destruction. The Director asked a great number of pointed questions, forcing the Unspeakable to strain his memory for more details than he'd realized he had retained, and he had been trained to retain details.

When the report and interrogation were completed, the Director, a man of middling build, black hair, and apparently in the early parts of middle age, sat down on a simple stool beside a workbench, and thought. The Unspeakable, sweating from a combination of exertion and nervous tension, took the time to regain his cool, and look around the Director's workshop.

To his considerable disappointment, though the chamber was positively rife with clearly magical objects, he could not discern the nature of the magics upon any, save that which was blatantly obvious. Four near-identical spheres floated about the office, three looked like nothing more than translucent glass, but the fourth hovered over the Director himself, glowing brightly. A cauldron large enough to seat three men within comfortably rested in the room's southern corner, though no heat source was lit beneath it.

A ritual circle occupied the center of the chamber, progressive rings of three, seven, and thirteen obelisks rising at equidistant points around its center, both the floor and the obelisks heavily engraved with runes, _none_ of which were in a language the Unspeakable was familiar with. In the northern corner, a set of glass-doored cabinets held a number of jarred materials, some of which the Unspeakable recognized, many others which he did not. The western corner was occupied by a set of bookcases, also covered with glass doors, though that part of the room was too dark for him to make out any of the titles.

And finally, the eastern corner of the room was occupied by a workbench and the Director himself, though the Unspeakable found himself unable to focus his eyes on what lay on the Workbench itself. This did not surprise the man, as he very much doubted the Director would allow him to casually see whatever project was momentous enough to occupy his time.

"A final question," the Director said, abruptly breaking the Workshop's silence, "Cornelius Fudge, was he present within the Ministry when this attack commenced?"

"Yes Directors," The Unspeakable said, "He was personally interrogating Lord Malfoy."

"That will be all then," the Director said, "Return to the Ministry, and aid in the recovery efforts."

The Unspeakable bowed, then departed immediately.

((()))

AN: Oh hey look, I updated in a week instead of a month! Hopefully, I'm out of the authorial doldrums I've been in, but I'm not promising anything, so don't get your hopes up too much.

A reviewer who wasn't logged in mentioned that regular fire will just cause C-4 to burn, not explode. This is correct; it takes a combination of extreme heat and some amount of pressure to make C-4 detonate. Thermite burns at 2500+ Celsius, and a cascading ignition like Harry provoked will cause at least some degree of pressure wave. A demolitions/pyrotechnics expert would be able to tell you whether or not it would be _enough_ pressure, but since I don't have half a ton to experiment with, for the purposes of this fic, it is sufficient.


	9. Chapter 8

Hero Harry Chapter 8.

AN: Last of the really nasty parts of the story come in this chapter. Nothing graphic this time, but what's happening will be fairly clear.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997. _

Fred and George Weasley were not known for being particularly serious, though if asked, they would tell you that from time to time they were Sirius. The small lodge that they usually worked in was selected both for its position near the edge of the camp, and for the fact that someone needed to keep watch on the Floo connection it hosted, without being obvious about it. The Weasley twins also were _not_ early risers, and thus it was that they missed the first three times Harry attempted to contact the camp through the Floo.

The fourth time, five hours after he'd started trying, they _were_ present, and more than a little startled to his face appear in the fire scarcely more than a week after the last visit to Puerto Rico had ended.

"G-get everyone together," Harry said sharply, "I've f-found the concentration c-camp, w-we need to attack im-m-mediately."

"_Everyone?_" George asked sharply.

"_Everyone._" Harry said flatly.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, April, 1997. _

"Harry, _please_ tell me that blood isn't yours," Were the first words out of Hermione's mouth when she came through the Floo.

Harry shook his head, and Hermione heaved a sigh of relief, but still scurried across the kitchen to where he sat in a conjured wheelchair and began fussing over him. By the time that the rest of 'everyone' had come through the Floo, she had stripped him of his outer robes, leaving him in Dragonhide body-armor and his combat harness, with its attached Dragonhide pouches, and cleaned the blood off of him.

Now present, were Fred, George, and Ginny Weasley, Hannah Abbot, Neville Longbottom, Susan Bones, Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy, Tracy Davis, Daphne Greengrass, Luna Lovegood, Katie Bell, Dean Thomas, and Padma and Parvati Patil. With Harry and Hermione, that made seventeen young Witches and Wizards; blatantly absent, however, was Lily Potter.

"Where's m-mum?" Harry asked quietly as he looked over his former schoolmates, crowded into the lodge's kitchen.

"Lily was gone," George said unhappily, "I jimmied the door to make sure, and found this on the kitchen table."

He handed a thick envelope to Hermione, which had her name on it. The young brunette opened the envelope, which had a note written on the reverse side of the flap.

"They changed the date of my second hearing, and didn't inform me until this morning," Hermione read aloud, "If all goes well I'll be back before you realize I've gone, if not, make sure you use my notes in here before Harry does anything impetuous," she looked up at Harry, "It's dated today. The twins probably just missed her."

"What's inside?" Fred asked as Hermione pulled the envelope

"How would she know?" George replied, taking an idle swing at the back of his twin's head as he did so, "Hasn't read over it yet, has she?"

"I figured a genius like her might know just by touching it," Gred shot back as he ducked under Forge's swing, "Touch-biblio-something. You know, like reading books, but with your mind?"

"That'd be Telebiblioculus," Hermione said idly as she looked over the sheets paper that had been in the envelope, "If you don't mind butchering your Latin," She looked up to Harry for a moment, "This is going to take me a while to figure out, and I'm not going to be on any combat operations anyways. Go ahead and get started briefing the others, I'll catch up with you when I've sorted this out."

So saying, she walked off into the chalet's living room, leaving the others mildly confused.

"W-we need to be quick," Harry said, drawing the others attention back to himself, "Th-this started when I got to M-malfoy, Manor, which h-had been attacked..."

((()))

_Location unknown, time unknown._

"Do you tink Harry Potter wirr come for us?" Tabane eventually asked.

Seras thoughts immediately turned to the boy that she had tried to rescue, and had rescued her in turn, from Aurors the month before. She thought of the way he had demanded surrender from the Aurors, the way he had run off the two other Wizards who had showed up to protect the neighbors.

She thought of him cutting down the Aurors in a handful of seconds when they refused to surrender. She thought of his eyes later that same night, when she had spoken with him after all the others had fallen asleep.

All these things she thought of, the sum total of her experiences with Harry while she was an adult, and between the hardness she saw in what little emotion he had displayed, and his forthright altruistic actions, she couldn't find it in herself to answer one way or another.

Then another, much older memory struck her, of an eight year old boy protecting her from a group of bullies, and being beaten nearly to death for his trouble.

"He'll come," Seras said quietly, but with _absolute_ certainty.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, April, 1997. _

"-But I couldn't find miss Tonks," Harry finished, "I'm not going to be able to handle clearing the camp myself, not without a lot of the guards either escaping, killing prisoners, or both, and I don't want to have a repeat of losing Tonks. So I need people whose skills I know I can rely on, both to support me, and to not get themselves killed."

"We're behind you, all the way," Neville said immediately and _emphatically_, the others voicing words of assent, "You know what we can do, and from what you've told us, the Ministry's stooges are no match for us."

"Th-they aren't," Harry said, his stutter re-emerging as he came down off the emotional high of recounting the last day's events, "But there's a c-complication. All the Aurors and H-hitwizards are using Dragonh-hide now."

"That just limits our options, Harry," Draco said calmly, "There are still _plenty_ of ways to incapacitate, or more realistically, _kill_ men in Dragonhide robes."

"T-true," Harry said with a nod, "DOBBY!"

The named House-Elf appeared with nearly inaudible 'pop.'

"Get the Dragonhide f-for the others," Harry said, nodding towards the Kitchen's other occupants, "I'll be g-getting a few hours of s-sleep. D-divide yourselves up into f-four teams, and b-be ready to split those in h-half. S-somebody should tell y-your families w-what you're doing too."

And with that, Harry rolled out of the kitchen, heading towards the Chalet's bedrooms, leaving the others to talk amongst themselves.

"Well," Draco said, dry amusement on his face and in his voice, "That was an unexpected turnaround. Anybody care to guess as to _why?_"

"That's easy," Susan said flatly, "He's been killing people again, a _lot_ this time, and you know how he hates that."

"Lily being absent won't be helping anything either," Neville said softly, "We all know he doesn't like things being out of his control, and this conflict between the Yanks courts and his mother has been hard on both of them."

"Both true," Draco said, nodding respectfully to Longbottom and Bones, "But with Harry, there's more to it than that. He didn't put much emphasis on it, but it's clear that the Ministry have been collecting a great deal more Muggleborns than Harry had thought, and most likely he feels personally responsible for failing to save them."

"Very likely," Dean Thomas said, nodding slowly, "And considering their likely fates at the hands of the Ministry, I think we can all agree that this just makes effective tactical deployment all the more important. I think we all know that Harry will be taking point in this operation, but it will likely be solely up to us to retain control of territory he has taken, and clean up Ministry casualties."

"So how do we want to spread ourselves out?" Daphne Greengrass asked, "Dragonhide Armor will give us a lot more durability, but it'll ruin any chance at disillusionment, _maybe_ Harry could put enough power into a spell for that, but I doubt he has the stamina to spare to do that for all of us. Which means a lot of our stealth options are out."

"Not necessarily," Ginny said, "I wouldn't be surprised if Harry kept a dozen invisibility cloaks in reserve, just in case. It's something to ask him about, but in the meantime," She turned to her twin brothers, "Do you two have anything that might help with this?"

In perfect synchronicity, broad, insane, _terrible_ grins grew on the Weasley Twins' faces.

((()))

Hermione was more than a little baffled at what Lily had passed on to her. Not over what it _was_, for that was fairly obvious to her after the half hour she had spent reading through the dozens of sheets of paper Lily had left her, but how Lily had managed the work in the first place.

Lily Potter, it seemed, had decided to add two new dimensions to enchantment crafting. The first, was to take the concepts behind Runic magic, operating off of symbology, to use math, rather that Rune-words, to define an engraved spell or enchantment. This in and of itself was a bit of lateral thinking Hermione found interesting, but suspected any number of innovators had come upon themselves over the years, and simply had not passed along to society at large. It was the second innovation Lily had been working on, integrating more advanced mathematics into Arithmancy (which usually did not move beyond polynomial Algebra and Trigonometry), specifically the integration of _Fractals_ into her work. Considering that mathematical recursion had only really been explored in any detail for the last three or so centuries, and Fractals themselves had only really been defined for twenty or so years, Hermione was fairly certain that this was groundbreaking work in regards to magic in general, much less enchanting in specific.

What Lily had been specifically using it for, was an attempt to recreate the barrier effect of Harry's magic; considering that the woman had spent more than half a decade essentially joined to that barrier, Hermione wasn't surprised that it was something that she would decide to work on.

Fractal equations created self-repeating patterns, that copied themselves both within and without themselves, much like drawing a triangle, then using its form as a basis to extrapolate a larger triangle of the same proportions, then filling its interior with a smaller triangle of the same proportions, and repeating both patterns ad-infinitum. One of the issues regarding enchanting was that a given iteration of the Runes generally used to define an enchantment's traits reached a point of diminishing returns, where the set of Runes _could_ absorb more magical energy to further empower the enchantment, but it took increasingly larger amounts of magic to produce decreasing levels of effectiveness. Enchanters had worked with multiple-iterations of the same Rune sequence, but unless a given set of wards were all engraved onto the same object, the Ward fields tended to conflict with each other. This led to the use of increasingly large ward stones, and a fairly hard limitation on how much magic could be imbued on an object small enough to be portable.

This was why the use of Arithmancy to make energy use in enchantments more _efficient_ had lead to so much development in things like Brooms, enchanted clothing, and things like toys in the last century, as the rapid advancement and proliferation of mathematics amongst non-magicals filtered through to the magical world. Lily's work, however, had taken the efficiency-enhancements of Arithmancy to a whole new level though, by creating effectively creating a magical formula, which when it had power pumped through it, would write the required Runes for the enchantment itself, then continuously replicated them on both a larger and smaller scale to make efficient use of magical energy so long as more power was pumped into it.

Theoretically, it could result in a near-unlimited amount of potential power for a given Enchantment set, so long as the power was available to pump into it.

Unfortunately, the work wasn't complete, as Lily had yet to create an element that would allow the array to retain power, rather than let it simply bleed it back out as soon as it was no longer being pumped in. As it was, it more or less functioned as magical ablative armor, the degree of protection provided being determined by the amount of magical energy that the user fed into it. Which meant that while it wasn't the force-multiplier that Harry's barrier was, it _did_ still offer unprecedented protection against everything short of the Unforgiveables, something that Hermione knew Harry and the others could _definitely_ make use of.

((()))

_Location Unknown, Time Unknown_.

The door to Seras' and Tabane's cell slammed open, jarring Seras to wakefulness. Light poured in, and after so long in the dark, anything more than the faintest of lights was outright blinding.

"Fudge's dead," An ugly voice snarled, "And so is most of the Ministry. Word has it that soon you're all going to be _disposed_ of, and that means I can finally have my revenge on you chink, your precious virginity won't protect you _now._

"Touch me," Tabane snarled, "And you will _die_."

"Try your magic shit on me again," The voice returned arrogantly, "and _she_ dies."

Another meaty thump sounded, and another voice was heard, a tiny child, sobbing desperately. Seras squinted, still unable to see through the blinding light, but she didn't need to be able to see to realize that Tabane's sister had just been thrown into the room.

((()))

_North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, April, 1997. _

When Harry returned to the rest of the group, they had moved out onto the veranda, and had donned the Dragonhide armor that Dobby had brought for them. He was mildly surprised to see that Hermione had rejoined the others, rather than first coming to him, but he supposed she had likely found him sleeping, and decided not to interrupt.

Instead, she appeared to be busy tattooing a mathematical formula onto Hannah Abbot's hand with her wand, something that came as a surprise to Harry. He was certain there was a purpose behind what she was doing, he just had no idea what it was.

"Are you ready to go?" Harry asked, his voice short, curt, and full of deadly focused intent, magic again overriding his curse-induced stutter.

"Almost," Hannah said, wincing slightly, "Hermione's just got me, and the Weasley twins to finish."

"Good," Harry said, nodding sharply, and beginning to pass out dragon-hide pouches by pairs, "One with grenades, one with flashbangs. We can heal ear and eye damage, we can't heal people dead from shrapnel wounds. Remember that when you use them around prisoners. I recommend disillusioning them and throwing them from cover."

"Aye," Neville said as he took his pair, "Do you have any other invisibility cloaks we can use?"

"Half a dozen," Harry said, "I'll ask Dobby to retrieve them when we get to England. We'll be stopping at one of my safehouses before we move in for the assault. Make sure you can Apparate to the safehouse, it'll have a stockpile of portkeys to evacuate survivors to here. From here, through the Floo to Sakakawea. Hermione,"

"Yes?" Hermione said, not looking up from her work.

"Once we move out," Harry continued, "I want you to go back to Sakakawea and get the others ready to receive wounded, or repel a counter-assault through the evacuation chain. I don't know how much hostile manpower will be present at the camp, or how competent, but I don't want to take chances. And what are you doing to Hannah?"

"Fractal enchantment," Hermione said absently, "It's not complete yet, but simply channeling power into it will allow them to partially imitate your barrier effect. It's what your mother was working on. I'll be finished with with Hannah and the Weasleys in about ten minutes."

"Good," Harry said, nodding sharply again, "How are the teams divided up?"

"The Weasley and Patil twins together," Draco said, "Dean, Luna, Susan, and myself. Hannah, Daphne, Tracy, and Neville. Ginevra, Katie, and Blaise. A mixture of power and mobility for each team. If Lily were along, or Hermione was coming with, she'd round out the last team, but..."

"But we work with what we have," Harry said, nodding sharply, "I'll be leaving ahead of the group to speak with Lucius. We should be assaulting the camp within thirty minutes.

((()))

_Southern Wales, twenty-seven minutes later._

The camp was a fairly simple affair, something that Harry and the others were glad of. Small clusters of tents, laid out haphazardly, littered about a field that had been lying fallow, all of it under the protection of anti-muggle wards and a large-scale notice-me-not charm. Personally, Harry suspected that the notice-me-not charm had only been added _after_ the first few times Moody's men had proven that four competent men were worth more than a dozen idiots. Either way, he had found it now, and it was time to begin the assault.

Harry and the other Hogwarts exiles were bunkered down in the undergrowth of a copse of trees that bordered one side of the field. Harry hadn't seen any Auror cloaks amongst the few Wizards he'd spotted wandering about, but even if few others bothered with much in the way of awareness training, he hadn't felt like taking any chances. It was broad daylight, so they'd all charmed their heads into camo-pattern colors, which combined with the green dragonhide they wore fairly well.

"Katie, Ginny, Blaise," He called quietly, "Since you're understrength, you're on overwatch. Pull your rifles, and snipe any hostiles you see moving once the fighting begins. Go for the head unless you're sure they're not wearing Dargonhide."

The trio silently nodded, unshrunk their firearms, and began setting up firing positions amongst the brush.

"You're squad four," Harry continued sweeping a serious gaze across everyone present, "Twins, you're squad one, Thomas, Lovegood, Bones, Malfoy, you're squad two, the rest of you are squad three. You've all been developing squad tactics to use against me for a year now, so I won't try to tell you how to run things, just remember, that's _not_ me you're fighting. I could take this entire place out myself, but a lot of prisoners would die in the process. They're all a _lot_ less dangerous than me, but you're fighting groups, not single targets. You understand?"

Everyone nodded in response.

"Right," Harry said, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment before continuing, his gaze boring into several of the others, Daphne, Tracy, and Ginny in particular, "Last thing, _don't get __close to me _until the fighting's over. I'm going to be operating on a hair-trigger, and I _don't_ want to accidentally kill one of you. Got that?"

"Got it," Ginny said immediately.

"Good," Harry said curtly, nodding sharply at the smaller redhead, "Then let's go."

So saying, he swept his cloak up around himself, and disappeared.

((()))

Harry Potter and stealth were old friends. Ever since the days when Harry had first escaped Dudley's ham-handed bullying via simple means of speed and evasion. Speed only mattered if you had a place to escape to, and when the 'law' was worthless to protect you from a superior force and you lacked the means to neutralize it, hiding was the only remaining option. In primary school, Harry had learned to move as quietly as possible. In his first year at Hogwarts, Harry had learned how to use body language and gait to make himself less noticeable. In his second year, he had gained an invisibility cloak and mastered the silencing charm; his stealth abilities had only improved since.

Now, the only real chance the inattentive camp guards had at catching him was blind luck; he smelled liquor on some of them, and they 'patrolled' the camp's perimeter more in the manner of men taking a stroll through the city, than people actually looking for hostile interference. Harry left each guard he slipped past a parting gift, a shrunken gas grenade stuck to the hoods of their robes.

Moving through the inside of the camp itself was a wholly different affair; some parts of it were quite wide open, some had scarcely enough space between tents for a man to sidle between them. This raised the difficulty of Harry's infiltration from 'nonexistent' to 'minor effort required.' He knew that squad two was moving into the camp beneath invisibility cloaks themselves, and it was only a matter of time before they were detected, but he wanted to plant knockout grenades on as many guards as he could, as well as gain as best estimate of the manpower present as he could, before the fighting began.

The tents themselves presented another problem, it only took glancing within a handful to determine that most, if not all, were Wizard tents, with expanded spaces within. The three he'd looked into near the perimeter seemed to be guard barracks, and he'd planted gas grenades within those as well, but he knew that any number of those within would be functionally be prison cells, torture chambers, and any number of other things. Knowing which was which, however, and how many people, prisoners or guards, were present within, was functionally impossible without investigating each and every one. Meaning that he had no idea where the priority objectives were, where the primary hostile force concentrations are, and how difficult it would be to fight past the latter to reach the former.

It was an intelligence nightmare, but he _knew_ that at least some of the Muggleborns were being used in sacrifice rituals, and he couldn't afford to risk more deaths by delaying the rescue in order to gather more information. Worse, the camp might be relocated if he waited, and then he'd be back to square one.

Then he caught a scent that forced action sooner, rather than later; the unmistakeable odor of sex mixed with blood. It was theoretically possible that one of the guards had brought his woman in for a tryst, but it was far, _far_ more likely that rape was in active progress, and that wasn't something he could allow to go on one moment longer than he was humanly capable of preventing.

So casting caution and stealth largely by the wayside, he cast a charm which tracked the scent to a particular tent, and stormed down into it.

((()))

_Virgin Holding Cells, Concentration Camp, Southern Wales._

Seras eyes had adjusted, and she could see now.

A large part of her felt it would be better if she still _couldn't_ see, but the _sounds_ from what the Auror was doing to Tabane was almost _worse _when she couldn't see. In 1997 in the UK, it took deliberate effort to still be a virgin at Seras' age, and escaping from the blatantly sexual language and frankly disgusting behavior of some of her peers in the public education system was effectively impossible; Seras was _not _unaware of what sex was, how it worked, and how many boys (and some girls) liked to talk about it. None of that prepared her for watching _this_ though.

Seras had never felt so helpless in her entire life, and she _hated_ it. Hated it more and more with every second, every time that the Auror slapped Tabane. But most of all she hated it watching Tabane refuse to scream, cry, or make any other sound, as the girl just glared cold hatred at the Auror who was raping her.

Eventually though, it ended. The Auror spent himself, and heaved his body off of Tabane, who was still tied down, at her ankles and elbows, because bonds would have slipped off of the girl's wrists, as she had no hands to keep them in place.

Seras had never even _conceived_ of, much less _seen_, cold, _deadly_ hate like that which lived in Tabane's eyes in that moment, nor like she felt in her own heart.

Then the Auror shouted something out of the cell; Seras couldn't really hear _what_ exactly over the rage roaring in her ears, but two more men, these not wearing the red cloaks of Aurors, came down into the room, and said something to the Auror. He shrugged, and gestured towards Seras and Tabane, the words he spoke still gibberish to the blonde British girl. One of the men advanced on her, the other said something else, and the Auror nodded.

Then the second man grabbed Tabane's little sister by the throat, seized her filthy dress by the collar, and tore it off.

"IIIIEEEEEEEEE!" Tabane screamed, the cold hatred in her eyes turned to a burning, white-hot rage, and everything seemed to happen at once.

The man reaching for Seras grabbed hold of one of her breasts, but then started, and turned to face the raging Japanese girl.

Tabane's sister screamed.

The Auror turned a sneer on Tabane, and laughed, a high, cruel sound.

The door to the cell was ripped out and away, taking a fair chunk of the doorframe with it, and Harry Potter stepped into the room, his eyes literally glowing with a terrifying mixture of power and anger.

Everyone in the room, save Tabane's sister, turned to stare at the Potter scion.

Harry's eyes swept over Seras, the man holding her breast, Tabane's naked body, the stumps where her hands used to be, the blood and fluid pouring out from between her legs, the sweaty Auror standing over her, the man holding Tabane's screaming sister in one hand and torn dress in the other.

"For you three," Harry said, his voice soft, but filled with unmistakable intent, "There will be no offer of surrender."

And then the Wizards died, screaming.

((()))

The camp at large exploded into activity as unmistakeable death screams echoed out of one of the tents, dozens of guards pouring out of the Wizarding tents laid throughout the field, and Squad four began to set to murderous work. They had all, unfortunately, killed before; the Ministry assault on Hogwarts had been far from bloodless, and those who had been even remotely close to Harry had all been caught up in the fighting. Another thing that proximity to Harry, and in particular their monthly combat exercises, had taught them was brutal utilitarianism.

And Witches and Wizards made for _vicious_ Snipers. Silenced gun barrels, combined with charms that blocked the muzzle-flash and vanished the small amount of gunsmoke; if they'd had the time, they could have tuned enchantments in to eliminate the recoil too, but that was a far more precise affair and they lacked the luxury of time. Laid out in the underbrush at the edge of the forest, their guns charmed to camo colors, themselves already colored likewise, the actual bullets they fired disillusioned, they were the next best thing to undetectable.

All three of them were using a weapon known as the L118A to the British Army, the Psg 90 to the Swedish Army, and the Accuracy International Arctic Warfare sniper rifle to private citizens in Europe who cared enough to know about such weapons. It was used by any number of other European militaries, which was the primary reason Harry had acquired it for his allies to use a a sniper weapon; the broader the distribution, the more fell into the black market, and the easier parts were to acquire. It was a heavy rifle weighing almost fifteen pounds, but with the ability to shrink and unshrink items on command carry-weight wasn't a concern.

What _was_ a concern, was the effective range, eight hundred meters, which was more than enough range to rain fire upon the entire camp. Neither Blaise Zabini nor the two Slytherin girls were accurate enough to qualify as snipers in any respectable modern military, but they _were_ to the level of competent rifleman. And if they only could only manage one in three shots on their targets successfully, firing roughly every four seconds would net roughly fifteen dead Wizards and Witches every minute.

Lucius Malfoy and Cornelius Fudge may have brought about the conditions which created the camp, and Harry Potter may have lead the assault, but the shots fired by Blaise Zabini, Ginevra Weasley, and Katie Bell, shed the first blood in what became the greatest massacre in the Wizarding world since the 1700's.

((()))

Draco Malfoy was quite inclined to Stealth. He had spent the second half of his fourth year at Hogwarts, and the first half of his fifth, in self-imposed social seclusion, and had learned the practicalities of both magical and non-magical stealth so that he could observe his fellow students unnoticed. The personalities, character, study habits, talents, and behavior patterns that he had found amongst the hundreds of Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beuaxbatons students had played a pivotal role in the still-ongoing shift to his worldview, away from what his father had taught him, and towards something he wasn't quite sure of yet.

Part of that shift had brought him to the Concentration Camp he now crept through, and the skills he had developed along the way stood him in good stead. Unlike Harry, Squad Two was not carrying magically prepared gas grenades, but they made up for equipment preparation with manpower. Each guard that they came across in a sufficiently isolated position was efficiently silenced by Luna, stunned by Susan, secreted away into an expanded storage space by Dean, and replaced with an illusion by Draco.

By the fifth guard, the process took them roughly two and a half seconds; unfortunately, after the eighth, someone screamed, and the camp exploded into activity. A year and a half ago, an assault on the Ministry itself wouldn't have drawn as proactive a response as that single set of screams did, but war had hardened most of the soldiers of magical England, and killed the rest.

"Fallback and form up," Draco growled quietly, leading the way into a tent no-one had yet emerged from, wand at the ready.

It immediately became obvious why no one had emerged from that particular tent; its expanded interior was laid out in a set of twelve simple prison cells, but largely empty and littered with dust.

"Looks like time for a Weasley Hello," Dean said dryly as he looked out the tent flap at the semi-organized chaos within the camp, "Shall we break out the 'special' supplies?"

"Yes," Draco said pleasantly, "Let's."

((()))

Squad One, comprised of the Patil and Fred and George themselves, had unsuprisingly landed on much the same idea. They were floating lazily above the camp, standing on a massive piece of silk stretched taut between four brooms, and charmed to be mostly transparent from above, but show nothing but the sky to those below.

Fred and George, unsurprising considering their past roles as Beaters, held a high opinion of the 'aerial bombardment' tactical role. Their creative bent with potions and enchanting, turned militant after the Ministry's assault on Hogwarts, added the means to their intent, and now for the first time in their lives they had the _golden_ opportunity to carry it out.

"'bout that time, eh chaps?" George called as he began pouring a bag of disillusioned somethings out into the air, where they hovered aimlessly.

"Righto," Fred said with a nod and a grim smile, as he loaded a 40mm Mortar with a bright pink round, "Let's take these sons of bitches down."

"What _is_ this?" Parvati asked, holding up a beaker filled with a revoltingly green liquid.

"Only one way to find out luv," Gred said with a dark smile, "Chuck it overboard."

"This is going over with it," Padma said flatly, holding up what appeared to be a woman's brassiere made entirely out of iron, "Though only sick curiosity motivates me to discover what it actually does."

"Let's get to it then," Frorge said, tossing his now-empty bag over the side; upon the instant that it left his hand, it turned into a Bludger, and rocketed down towards the milling mass of Wizards below.

The ordinance carried by the others wasn't far behind.

((()))

"Hey Harry," Seras said shakily, smiling at the younger boy as he conjured a thick blanket and wrapped it around Tabane's sister, "Glad you came."

"Wish I could have made it sooner," Harry said grimly as he turned and approached her, then cut her bonds with a gesture, and stuffed the crying Japanese girl into the blonde's arms.

Seras took hold of the girl reflexively, wincing at the pull on limbs which had been held immobile for so long, and watched as Harry moved over to Tabane, who was staring at the bloody smear of a corpse of the man who had torn her sister's dress off. Harry looked Tabane up and down again, his face contorting briefly and spasticly with emotion as he did so, his hands trembling, before deciding on a course of action. He levitated the girl slightly up from the wooden surface she had been tied to for the last year, then dismissed her bonds with a gesture, and conjured another blanket to wrap around her nude body.

"I don't know how to treat your injuries," He said grimly, as he pulled her into his arms, "But I brought people who will know at least something."

"Thank you," Tabane said, gazing up at Harry intently, her voice still accented but far clearer than Seras had ever head it before, "For saving my sister from my fate. For this, you have the gratitude of my family, such as it is."

Harry's eyes closed, and for a moment, his face was filled with a deep, agonizing pain that made Seras heart shiver to see. He opened his mouth to speak, was silent for a moment, then closed it again. Closing his eyes, he shook his head furiously, and turned to storm out of the cell.

"You're welcome," He said hoarsely, "We need to get the others in here out. Come on Seras."

((()))

Squad Three had decided upon a more direct approach to dealing with the assorted Aurors and Ministry lackeys about the base. They walked out directly out of the brush towards the camp, Daphne Greengrass and Tracy Davis banishing sharpened knitting needles towards targets, Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbot firing with magically-silenced M-16's.

Being the only readily visible threats, the Ministry minions gave them a _lot_ of attention. Spells were hurled towards the quartet in a mad flurry, and Tracy and Daphne rapidly shifted to working defensively. Anti-bullet shields started going up amongst the Aurors, and when Neville and Hannah's magazines ran dry, they simply reshrunk and stowed the weapons rather than reloading, and switched to using creative bits of magic to work around their foe's shields, such as summoning one Wizard into another, or animating their outer robes to attack them.

The quartet outclassed their opponents in skill, power, and effective experience, but the weight of numbers began to pile up against them, forcing them into steadily more and more defensive postures. Between the four of them they dropped a dozen, then two, then a dozen and a half hostile Wizards, but it rapidly became obvious to both sides of the firefight that given a few minutes, they'd be overwhelmed.

Then a Hitwizard cast a Cruciatus Curse at Daphne, and the entire balance of the fight shifted.

Daphne dropped, screaming, and the Hitwizard was turned into a bloody pulp as an avalanche of Disillusioned Bludgers slammed into his body half a second after he raised the spell. The Bludgers, enchanted by the Weasley twins, rocketed back up into the air, trailing blood upwards with them, but becoming effectively impossible targets to the Ministry personnel. The balance of spellfire was still shifting in favor of the Aurors, Team Three having lost a quarter of its manpower temporarily having more impact on their effectiveness than a single lost Hitwizard to Bludgers, and those immediately around him to distraction, did on the Ministry's side of the equation.

Then a swamp spontaneously sprouted beneath the feet of half the Aurors and Hitwizards, and they lost their footing, a fair number of them falling in to discover the Pirahnas within. A second Hitwizard cast the Killing Curse at Neville, who neatly sidestepped it, and watched as the Hitwizard was pulverized by the Bludgers in turn.

Then an iron brassiere wrapped around the face of one of the Aurors who had been leering at Daphne as she lurched back to her feet, completely blocking his vision.

Throughout the camp, such scenes were repeated, Fred's mortar unleashing tangled masses of sticky Acromantula silk (which while not immune, was _resistant_ to magic), Parvati hurling bottled swamps down below, Draco and Dean unleashing fireworks that formed into carnivorous animals and attacked people's faces, all the while Ginny, Katie, and Blaise exacted a grim tribute from the camp's jailers with their sniper rifles.

By the time Harry stepped back onto the battlefield and began cutting down every Auror and Hitwizard within his reach, the Ministry had already effectively lost.

((()))

Three miles away in a modest hotel room, a black-haired man of average build, looking to be in his middle years, watched as the battle played out on the surface of the still waters in his room's bathtub. Nothing more than idle curiosity, and the occasional nod of approval regarding a given individual's particular use of a spell or magic, showed on his face as he watched the massacre unfold.

At least, not until Harry Potter stepped out of a tent, and into clear view for the first time since the battle began.

"Mister Potter," He whispered quietly, a smile ghosting across his face, "You are an altogether too difficult man to find."

And with that, he disappeared from his hotel room.

((()))

The first strike came with next to no warning, one moment Harry was maneuvering around the edges of one of the Weasley-created swamps, running down a squad of Hitwizards, and the next a massive magical presence had appeared behind him and launched the most powerful stunning spell Harry had ever seen at him. Harry's magical sense had never been able to tell what a given spell was, simply that a spell had been cast; that he could discern the nature of the spell was a simple product of the sheer power behind it.

He lacked the time to react, and it washed over him, part of it absorbed by his Dragonhide armor, the rest by his magical barrier, and Harry immediately dropped his pursuit of the Hitwizards, Apparated to directly behind the newcomer, and lashed out with a powerful wave of stunning magic of his own.

From behind, without a wand, word, or gesture, with less than half a second to react, the man deflected the stunner.

Deflected the _entire wave_ of magic. Not just the simple bolt of magic that less exceptional Wizards cast, but a blast of magic taller and broader than Rubeus Hagrid.

The man twisted around and fired another spell at Harry, moving faster than _any_ opponent the Potter scion had _ever_ faced; Harry had begun to duck the instant the man began to spin, and managed to drop under the spell, then leapt into the air, unshrinking and mounting a broom as he did so.

Exactly one point three seconds later, the pair of Grenades Harry had left on the ground detonated, but his new foe was already gone, Apparated into the air in a position parallel to Harry's course, unleashing a new wave of purple magic towards the younger Wizard.

Harry lashed out with a wave of dispelling magic, which disrupted, but failed to outright overpower, the purple spell. It had been three years since Harry had faced _any_ situation where he could not overpower his foe, and concordantly, he kicked up the intensity of his response, wheeling about in the air to charge the opponent directly.

Both lashed out with large waves of magic, not intending to allow the other the chance to dodge; blue magic met yellow magic, and the spells exploded into icy flames before dissipating. Harry burst through the fire and ice, one hand firing a Beretta 9mm charmed for minimized recoil directly at the man, the other holding a Wakizashi charged with a massively overpowered lightning spell.

The bullets bounced off of a barrier less than six inches in front of the man's chest, and a single wave of his hand both dispelled the lightning spell on Harry's blade, and called a similar blast to lash out against Harry's chest, where it was defeated by his Dragonhide armor, though it became painfully warm as it absorbed the electrical energy.

Both combatants intensified their efforts further.

((()))

On the ground, Squad Three had achieved total control of the local territory, and had begun searching tents for prisoners. It took some time to search the tents with larger interiors, especially with two of them staying in position to guard the entrance at all times, but they found the prisoners soon enough.

Physically, the first prisoners they found were in surprisingly condition, and the cells they were in could even be thought of as not all that different from extremely cheap dorm rooms, if one ignored the barred doors with heavy mechanical locks. All of the prisoners they found in that first block though, were male, and had 'mudblood' branded across their foreheads.

Two years ago, none of them would have even recognized anything odd about only finding men, especially given that they were anywhere from pre-teens to ancient; now though, Abbot, Greengrass, Davis and Longbottom were far more aware of just how ugly a place the world can be. And the lack of women left a sick feeling in their stomachs.

((()))

Harry kicked himself into high-mobility combat, which for him, meant stowing the broom, because flight simply wasn't keeping him mobile enough. A staccato series of cracks sounded above the embattled camp, as Harry Apparated at an average rate of three times every two seconds, appearing just long enough to launch another spell at his opponent before disappearing to another angle of attack.

The first handful pierced the man's active defenses, but were absorbed by the barrier that always manifested six inches from the surface of his skin, and within ten seconds he had begun to react swiftly enough to deflect Harry's offense with spells of his own.

It was when the man began to somehow predict Harry's Apparition destinations, and effectively start hitting Harry _back_, that he realized he might actually be in trouble.

((()))

Squad two _had_ found the women, and what they found had sickened them, both better and worse than what Draco, and particularly Susan, had worried they might find.

They found what amounted to an enormous children's creche, occupied by two dozen pregnant females between the rough ages of fourteen and forty, with a dozen younger girls and older women looking after them and the fifteen or so babies therein.

"It looks like Umbridge and Fudge decided to start a breeding program," Luna said sadly as she walked up to a pregnant blonde girl roughly her own age, "I'm guessing they brought in 'Pure' blood men to 'breed' you all?"

The girl turned away, face turning red with shame, but nodded in response to Luna's question.

"This is _sick_," Dean said, his face paling slightly, which was quite an accomplishment with his dark complexion.

"It is," Draco said grimly, as he looked at the younger girls, wondering if any of them were pregnant and just not showing it yet, "But there's a twisted logic to it. Keep a Witch constantly pregnant, and with magic to help ensure healthy delivery, she can produce thirty-something babies during her fertile years. More if there are twins or triplets. Start with a hundred witches, cross them with 'pure' bloodlines, and you'll have _thousands_ of children with purely magical grandparents within twenty years, nearly a hundred thousand in forty, and _millions_ in eighty. If you want to make Wizards and Witches dominant in the world, you need _a lot more of them_."

"How did you know?" One of the elderly women present asked.

"It's the sort of thing my Father might have thought up, five years ago," Draco said with a grimace, "How many more creches like this are there?"

"We don't know," the older Witch said, "Somewhere between ten and twenty, but we don't have enough freedom to move about the camp to be sure."

"We need to get word to Hermione," Susan said, "She's not going to be ready to receive this many pregnant women and infants."

((()))

Both Harry and his foe were Apparating across the sky now, and spells had become almost irrelevant, as all they did was push the other to keep moving. Neither had scored a hit in more than sixty seconds, but neither was willing to hold themselves in place long enough to raise wards preventing the other from Apparating either.

It was a stalemate turning into an endurance battle, and Harry honestly had no idea whether or not it was one he could win.

((()))

After Ginny Weasley claimed her twenty-third kill, the surviving Aurors and Hitwizards started Apparating out. None of them had ever spotted the sniper team; most of them had simply assumed that Squad Two or Squad Three had been firing at them, and those who had actively attempted to find them had met bloody ends before they could decide which direction to shield from.

To Blaise's surprise, the Aurors had actually planned far enough to have a prepared signal in place to sound a general retreat, and within thirty seconds, the camp was empty of all but the strike team, the prisoners, and Harry and his unknown adversary's duel. Between the three of them, the sniper team had accounted for better than eighty kills, and combined with the other casualties sustained that day and the previous night's strike on the Ministry itself, the remnants of Fudge's power base were completely broken.

((()))

Eventually, Harry had chosen to Apparate a more substantial distance from his opponent, and the man had failed to follow, resulting in a lull in combat, both of them taking the time to size their opponent up further, as well as consider what they'd already learned of the other's combat style.

Which turned out to be very little. Both had defensive effects which had allowed them to completely shrug off what few hits the other had landed, both were capable of rapid teleportation for tactical maneuvering, and both possessed sufficient power to reshape conventional spells into area-of-effect waves of magic. Harry used a broom, but did not _need_ it to remain aloft, his opponent simply flew without visible physical aid.

Neither had enough information to formulate a plan to exploit a weakness of the other, or leverage their own strength to greater effect. Both of them slowly moved up, considering their next moves carefully, keeping a sharp eye on the other, waiting to see what their opposing number's next move would be.

When they closed within thirty feet of each other, Harry's foe made the first move, raising his arms and summoning a massive arc of lightning between his hands, Harry went for his non-magical weaponry, withdrawing and unshrinking an RPG from one of the pouches on his combat harness.

((()))

The sky erupted in a display of violence the likes of which Draco Malfoy had never seen before. Part of him was lured to watch the criss-crossing cascades of fire, thunder, bullets, and explosions, another part said he needed to turn his attention towards helping the assorted prisoners escape; the internal argument became moot as debris and loose spellfire began to rain down on them from above, necessitating he begin a range of magical deflections and shielding to protect the babies, mothers, and women emerging from the tent behind him.

Apparition _could_ be performed from inside magically-enlarged spaces, but tended to result in rougher rides, and required more magical energy. With Harry busy, removing both his extreme skill with the art and seemingly-inexhaustible reserves from the chain of transport, Draco wasn't certain the rest of them would be able to Apparate all of the prisoners to the safe house before exhaustion set in, much less manage the arduous task (much less manage it _safely_) from inside the magically expanded space. Which meant that each of them was exposed for a few seconds as they emerged from the tent, then took hold of one of the members of Squad Two, before disappearing to Harry's safe house.

With at least ten more similar children's creches, Draco wasn't certain if they'd be able to move everyone. He _was_ certain that they had to try; to do anything else would be unthinkable.

_Well_, Draco thought idly to himself as he raised another anti-bullet shield to block debris falling from the battle overhead, _At least I'm not _in_ that fight. Actually _listening_ to Potter two years ago may have been the best decision I ever made..._

((()))

It only took Harry seconds to decide that attempting to restart the Apparition tag was a pointless exercise; neither he nor his foe were any more capable of scoring hits with their newly-chosen weapons in such a contest. If he'd detected any noticeable diminishment of the intense aura of magical power his foe cast off as he threw massively powerful combat spells around like cheap tripping jinxes, he might have continued in the hopes of exhausting his opponent, but there was too much risk of collateral damage to those on the ground below.

Instead, Harry wove back and forth across the sky, trying to position himself so that the sun would blind his foe to his attacks, while avoiding putting his allies below into his line of fire in case of overshooting his target. With the way his foe had begun using shields, however, such worries seemed wholly unnecessary.

Most Wizards learned the _Protego_, a general-purpose shield designed to block essentially any spell, provided it wasn't totally overpowered, and left it at that. Since Harry and Moody's rebellion against the Ministry, and both Moody's men and Harry himself's prolific use of muggle firearms, old tomes with spells for protecting Wizards from non-magical weaponry had come out, and more specialized shields designed specifically to absorb small, high-speed objects such as bullets, had become standard-use amongst those who wished to _survive_ in the Ministry's service.

The Wizard below Harry, however, went far, _far_ beyond that. He used a multi-layered set of shields against Harry's RPG's that absorbed concussive, kinetic, and thermal energy in turn, bringing the jet of superheated metal the warhead launched upon detonation to a screeching halt. He used a shield Harry had never seen before to block Harry's attempts to electrocute his opponent; _and_ he used the specifically-designed anti-bullet shield when Harry tried to take his opponent down with conventional firearms.

Harry knew that he was forcing his opponent to burn more magical energy than he was himself, but going by the rate of exchange, was fairly certain that he'd run out of ammunition _long_ before the man ran out of stamina...

((()))

Squad Four joined up with Squad Two when they reached their fifth group of prisoners, and their third creche, which considerably relieved the stress on Squad Two. That Harry had managed to direct most of his foe's fire upwards also helped considerably, as it took a lot of strain off of whoever was keeping watch for, and defending against, collateral damage from the fight above.

Bullets and bits of shrapnel were far easier to shield against than Fiendfyre.

Hannah had gone on through to Sakakawea with the first batch to provide a more detailed description of what to expect; they could have simply passed a message with one of the refugees, but none of _them_ knew who would need the information the most, primarily Hermione, Minerva McGonagall, Amelia Bones, and James Johnson, the American in charge of the Sakakawea site.

Half an hour later, when Squads Three and Four were on their eleventh group of prisoners and starting to verge on magical exhaustion, she returned.

Harry was still fighting.

((()))

Harry hadn't experienced the sensation of magical fatigue since his power struggle with the Goblet of Fire in 1994, but he was beginning to feel it now. The fight had ultimately devolved into an endurance match, nothing more, and nothing less. Harry's weapons were all either devoid of ammunition or destroyed, his grenades were functionally useless in midair combat, and in spite of spending literally thousands of rounds of ammunition against the man's defenses, he was still proving to have greater magical stamina than Harry possessed.

And for the (possibly literal) life of him, Harry didn't know what to do about it. Even when he had fought against Tom Riddle, the only reason the man had been able to stand against him was because of the distraction his dozens of minions provided; if they'd simply dueled, Harry would have crushed the man easily. Granted, Riddle was still more magically powerful than Harry at the time, but he hadn't possessed anywhere _near_ the tactical prowess or level of equipment preparation Harry did. This foe though, simply possessed so much more power and skill than Harry that it was functionally overwhelming.

And neither of them had yet spoken a single word to the other.

((()))

Squads One and Two eventually met up with Three and Four in the northwest quadrant of the camp, leaving only the southwest to clear for survivors. Once the twins had dropped out of the sky to avoid the insanely over-powered duel Harry was fighting, they had, unlike the other squads, started breaking down and stowing the tents as they searched. The Weasleys, at least, were not above looting a defeated enemy, though they weren't at the point where they were willing to start rifling through the pockets of dead Aurors and Hitwizards.

War had jaded them, but not _that_ much yet.

All said and done, in less than an hour since the attack had begun, the strike team had evacuated over fifteen hundred people from the camp, as well as a couple hundred more babies held in their mother's arms.

And they were closing in on the last few groups of captives.

((()))

Harry slammed down into one of the Weasley-created swamps, panting for Oxygen, and his foe rapidly dropped down towards him. He wasn't _truly_ exhausted, not yet, but at this point, he still needed to buy time for the others to finish the evacuation and then flee, and sitting in place long enough to see what his foe actually _wanted_ was the best gambit to buy time he'd come up with.

"Who are you?" Harry shouted up at the man, his voice rough from exertion.

"You have no need to know," The man replied calmly, as he touched down on the surface of the swamp in front of Harry, "There is only one question that matters here. _Where is the Stone?"_

"The _stone?_" Harry said, honestly confused, "_What _stone?"`

"Don't play coy with me boy," The man said, slight irritation flavoring his voice and face, "I know it was you that removed the Philosopher's Stone from Hogwarts six years ago, now tell me where it is, and I will entertain arguments as to why I should let you live."

"Oh," Harry said in realization, forcing a smile onto his face he only half-felt, "_That_ stone. I suppose it _was_ pretty important, it'd make sense that someone would come looking for it sooner or later."

"I would have expected someone with as eminently practical a reputation as yourself to keep better track of such an important artifact," The man said, disappointment clear in his tone and on his face.

"I did," Harry said dryly, deliberately wording things in a manner appropriate to dragging the unexpected conversation out, "For as long as I had it."

The man waited, then when it became clear that Harry would not say anything further unprompted, snorted.

"So what _happened_ to it then," He demanded impatiently, "If you no longer have it?"

"It was destroyed," Harry said flatly, then after a moment's pause to read the abrupt anger in the other man's expression, "In my battle with Riddle. He did nearly kill me, you know."

"_Riddle_ destroyed the Stone?" The man snapped, leaning forward to loom over Harry "Preposterous. He wasn't anywhere near fool enough to casually destroy an irreplaceable artifact such as that."

"I think you give him too much credit," Harry said, flicking his right hand to fling away a Pirahna attempting to chew on it, "But Tom wasn't the one to cause its destruction, it was some of his idiot followers."

The man took in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled it in clear aggravation.

"A scenario that is unfortunately _altogether too likely_," He growled, "But your words alone are not enough, now you will _show_ me."

Harry, for all that he had thus far come out on the losing end of the duel, had not been the least bit afraid to meet the other man's gaze. When the man launched a Legilimancy assault that was as overwhelming as it was unexpected, however, he wished he had been more cautious.

As with any skill he determined to be useful to train in with for defensive purposes, Harry had spent non-inconsequential amounts of time developing Occlumantic defenses for his mind, and trained with them at least three days a week. He bore the advantage of possessing an already-formidable force of will, as well as the fact that it was _his own mind_ that the ensuing duel of wills took place in, but the disadvantage of having been unable to train with a practitioner of Legilimancy, and that his unexpected adversary was a _true_ master of the rare art.

The man's mind crashed into Harry's mental defenses in much the way that an armored fist crashes into a wall thought to be formed of thin plywood, but instead turns out to be crafted of hardened concrete. His immediate offense was repelled, but the second assault followed immediately, and the man had already identified gaps in Harry's defenses that the sixteen-year-old couldn't have known about without the benefit of actual _experience_ with protecting his mind, and slipped into his mind.

Not that Harry took the second assault passively either, he _immediately _counter-attacked, limiting his opponent's gains to a few snatches of memory regarding Harry using the stone to mass produce tonnes of gold. He cringed under the next wave of attack however, as the man effortlessly exploited other holes in Harry's defenses, this time attacking in a way deliberately intended to inflict as much mental pain as possible.

Harry had _long_ since become inured to pain however, and it didn't slow his counter in the slightest, sending stabs of of weaponized malice at the other man's mind; they were parried near-effortlessly, but took his foe's attention long enough for Harry to force him out.

Then the fourth assault came, and it was nothing more, and nothing less, than nigh-overwhelming force exerted on every part of Harry's mind simultaneously, and it inflicted a pain like nothing Harry had never known before. It took him no more than a second and a half to recover from the unexpected agony and force the interloper out of his mind again, but for a master of Legilimancy, that second and a half was all that was needed.

"Hermione Granger," The man said contemplatively as Harry lurched to his feet, the mental battle abandoned now that the man had what he wanted, "I can't say I expected such a use of the Stone, but then, I've never had a proper chance to study its properties in the first place."

Harry _trembled_ with hot fury as he stood there, glaring hateful death at the man who had violated his mind, fully intending to kill him regardless of the apparent disparity in their power and skill.

"You will not _touch_ her," Harry snarled, his anger for once driving his words beyond what was reasonable, "I am going to _gut you like a bloody fish._"

"Don't be stupid, _boy_," The man snapped, "For all of your prodigious growth, you do not possess the strength to stop me from acquiring the Stone."

"Perhaps not Salazar," A new voice called, and Harry's head snapped around to face _another_ newly-arrived wizard, who _also _emitted an aura of immense power, "But _I_ do."

The newly arrived man was tall and muscular, though not excessively so, and youthful with smooth, cleanly shaven cheeks. Dark hair and eyes, as well as a deeper skin tone spoke of at least partially Italian or similar heritage, though the man spoke completely unaccented English, and strode towards the pair of combatants with utter confidence.

"Nicholas," Salazar spat, hatred filling his voice, "I thought you were in hiding."

"I was," Nicholas replied cordially, "However, when I sensed you in a pitched battle, I decided my intervention had become necessary."

"Foolish," Salazar snarled, "Without the Stone you lack the strength to match me."

"Eh," Nicholas said, waving a hand dismissively, "It was too much trouble to find the old one, so I simply created another."

Salazar froze, and near-insensate rage, made tangible by force of his magic, rolled off of the man in waves.

"_Made another_," Salazar ground out furiously, his eyes literally glowing with his anger, "Just. Like. That."

"Well of course," Nicholas said jovially, circling around to place the other man roughly between himself and Harry, "It's not like creating them is _difficult_, I'd simply never _needed_ another before, so not bothered."

Salazar trembled, shook, his fingers flexed, and for long, _long_ seconds, he simply _glared_ at the taller man.

"This isn't over," He finally snarled, "I _will_ have the Stone."

And with that, he disappeared, the wake of his overpowered Apparition creating a deafening _crack_ as he did so. Harry immediately aturned to face the newcomer, his attention hyper-focused by wariness and anger.

"Nicholas?" Harry demanded quietly, his fingers flexing as he prepared himself for another round of combat.

"Nicholas Flamel," The man said, his demeanor shifting to something much more serious now that they were alone, "I believe that you have something that belongs to me, young man."

"_Had_." Harry said flatly, "_If_ you are who you claim to be."

"Oy Ha-" Another voice cut in from directly behind Harry, before being cut off by a deafening thunderclap of electricity, as Harry's magic instinctively moved to protect himself from the abrupt presence behind him.

Harry leapt to the side and turned to bring both Nicholas and the other man in his field of vision, and saw the smoking body of one of the Weasley Twins laid out in the swamp of his own creation.

"DAMMIT!" Harry screamed, "I _told_ you not to get close to me during combat!"

((()))

AN: Arglebarglebarg. Possibly the most emotionally exhausting thing I've ever written. Two years ago, I don't think I'd ever have expected myself to write a rape scene, even in completely non-graphic manner.

But the real world isn't a pretty place, and good fiction reflects reality.

I'd meant to have this up by Sunday, but my keyboard died on Friday night, and I wasn't able to pick up a replacement until Sunday afternoon, meaning I didn't finish it until 5:35ish AM Tuesday. Also, as a result, part of this is Unbeta'd, so there may be more typos/errors than I'd like. If you spot any that are particularly egregious, please drop a note in a review ASAP, so I can do some retroactive editing. I won't be likely to edit much after the first couple days this is up though, so if you're going to do so, please be prompt.

Edit: I've gotten several corrections, and applied them. Thank you, folks.

For those of you who've been wandering what's happened, the next arc will include some details on what all happened to Hogwarts, and how most of the cast ended up in America.

Finally, the next update will be at coming the 16th at the earliest. It's not quite the weekly schedule I'd like to be keeping back on, but there's no way I'll have another chapter properly ready in four days with everything else on my plate.


	10. Chapter 9

Hero Harry Chapter Nine.

AN: The worst of the graphic ugliness is over for this story, the emotional fallout from what has already happened though, is going to be ongoing. Also, regarding the perspective a certain side-character introduced in this chapter on the world, I'd like to note that I spent 11 of the first 18 years of my life in an Arab nation, which was run by Sharia (Islamic) law; I'm not talking out of my ass, or necessarily agreeing with the particular character's bias, here.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

When Lily Potter stepped into the edge of the Refuge after her latest hearing, she immediately found two things had changed about the camp; it was larger than she'd last left it, and the entire place was in _chaos_.

"_Merlin!_," A nearby voice breathed, and Lily turned to see a boy she half-recognized as one of the Weasley boys at the edge of the clearing the camp occupied, running straight towards her, "Mum had us looking for you, You're Lily Potter, right?"

"Yes," Lily called, warily moving to meet the boy as he approached, "And you're Ronald, yes? What happened?"

"Call me Ron," The boy said as he reached her, slightly out of breath, "Harry and his harem went off to jolly old England today, and came back with hundreds of Muggleborns that Fudge's wankers had captured, you're a healer, right?"

"Not fully certified," Lily replied, glancing over the swarm of people moving through the camp, and picking out a number who were wearing remarkably similar clothing, all of which were robes, "But mostly-capable, yes."

"Good," Ron said, nodding towards Lily, before jogging off into the crowd, "Come on then, they need more healers over at your lab."

Lily wanted to ask the boy why they needed healers in the lab, but decided to wait and see for herself. Her hearing had been emotionally exhausting, even if it wasn't physically, and the boy (who was quite tall) was plowing through the crowd at a fair clip, so she just followed after him, even though she had no idea why he felt the need to lead Lily to her own lab.

((()))

_Camp Director's Office, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Paul Wright had joined the State Department when he was twenty-two, and fresh out of college with a degree in 'International Studies,' out of a desire to meet and work with people from around the world. When he was twenty-four, he had been assigned to the American Embassy in Iran to serve as a clerk; unfortunately for him, he had still been present on November 4th, 1979, when a group of Islamist militants (including a number of students) seized the building.

By the time Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as president fourteen and a half months later, minutes after which the Iranians who had held the building agreed to hand Wright and the fifty-one other hostages over, his perspective on how people of different nationalities, ethnic groups, and especially _religions_ related to each other, had changed substantially. Four hundred and forty-four days of being imprisoned, beaten, threatened with death, blindfolded, dragged before screaming crowds, deprived of access to basic bathing facilities, trapped in solitary confinement, subject to mock executions, and having the guards play Russian Roulette with himself and the others, had thoroughly killed Wright's youthful idealism, and instilled an abiding cynicism towards the motivations of others in the man.

Like the other hostages who decided to remain with the State Department, Paul had spent the next few years at postings within the United States' own territory; his first assignment overseas afterwards had been to the embassy in the United Kingdom, and he had ended the 80's posted in Israel. Most of the Israelis he interacted with appreciated his distrust of armed Muslims. When the Clinton Administration came into power, policy on Israel changed, and Wright was withdrawn to US soil, and due to his magical aptitude and experience in the United Kingdom, sent to run the Sakakawea camp when the Hogwarts Exiles fled across the Atlantic.

By terms of the number of people he was placed in a position of authority over, it was a major promotion beyond what his seniority itself would merit; most of the people coming in to staff the Clinton Administration's State Department, however, had little interest in managing such a non-glamorous establishment, especially as its magical nature meant there would be no positive publicity to go with the role. Wright was no fool, and found more than a little offense that he had been dumped into such an 'undesirable' position for his (as far as he was concerned) entirely realistic views on Islamic-run nations. However, Paul also actually considered granting asylum to refugees a worthy occupation, and while he was less than pleased with his superior's motivations in giving him the position, he was far from dissatisfied with the position itself.

His superiors in the State Department's continual ignorance of most of his requests for more supplies and personnel not-withstanding. The day's unexpected frenzy of refugees flowing in through a Floo connection that he hadn't even been _aware of_, however, _that_ put the camp's situation, and his own by proxy, into a whole new light. Mostly a chaotic one.

"You have _how_ many pregnant women holed up in the Granger lab?" Paul asked the women in front of him, small amounts of shock leaking through into his voice.

"Roughly five hundred," Minerva McGonagall said severely, "They are literally occupying all spaces save for the laboratory dealing with Tiberium, as it was deemed too unsafe. Some are barely pregnant, but a number of those near their due date have gone into stress-induced labor. We need every skilled physician, healer, midwife, and mediwitch you can dig up for us, optimally at least fifty."

"Miss McGonagall," Wright said, leaning back in his seat tiredly, "As I've told you before, this camp is essentially a 'throw away' posting. My superiors prefer to forget about its existence, and literally only grant enough of my requests for support to prevent themselves from being ousted from their own exalted positions due to malfeasance. It is unlikely that a request for medical aid will even be _reviewed_ within the next three days, much less _granted_."

"The fact remains," McGonagall said, not unsympathetically, "That we need more medical professionals; stress-induced labor can carry heightened risks, and all of the women need prenatal examinations from reliable physicians, not to mention the scores of infants Umbridge's mad plan had already resulted in."

Wright sighed, and scrubbed his face with one hand while he tried to think of a solution to the sudden manpower needs his camp faced. McGonagall sat and waited patiently, more than seasoned enough to know that pressing him further would not help, and she lacked the knowledge to give him meaningful advice or suggestions regarding his own job, in his own nation.

"Right," Paul said, focusing back on McGonagall, "I'll get some of my men to make _official_ requests for aid from the other refugees in the camp," Wright and McGonagall both left the fact that a fair number of the other Europeans in the camp would be far more likely to agree than if the British had asked themselves, "You get Granger to clean up all signs of the supernatural in his lab, and I'll ask some of the local volunteers to go recruit as many doctors from town as they can. We can legitimately claim that the nature and location of the lab is classified, without breaking the Statute of Secrecy. That'll be our short-term solution, while I try to dig up something more comprehensive from _somewhere_."

"Thank you," McGonagall said, already rising from her chair, "I'll go to the lab immediately, though I must warn you that the Arboretum will be functionally impossible to remove blatant signs of magic from."

"Noted," Young said, nodding to McGonagall as she moved towards the door, "The lab has a telephone, have someone call if anything else crops up."

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

When they reached the Granger Lab, Lily had to leave Ron at the door; there simply wasn't enough room for the tall and growth-spurt clumsy boy to safely maneuver inside. Lily herself was reduced to a pace that was scarcely better than a crawl, picking her way between the mass of moderately-pregnant women packed into the Lab's corridors. Much like the men she had seen wandering the camp, Lily saw clear signs of trauma in the eyes of the women she passed; unlike the men, there was an almost universal deeper horror to the women's eyes.

The only immediate upside Lily could see to the women packed into the hallways, was that she wasn't lacking for people to tell her where she was wanted, which turned out to be in Luna's Arboretum. It was hardly an ideal location for women in labor, and Lily was entirely unclear why Hermione, or any of the other eminently-sensible members of the Hogwarts Exiles, would decide to send them there.

The airlock to the Arboretum had been cranked fully open, and Lily could smell the lush closed environment well before she entered it; within, she found a dozen women, some too young to properly be called _women_ rather than girls, laid out on transfigured mattresses, all of them obviously in labor.

"Misses Potter," Ginny Weasley called from just beside the airlock, distracting Lily from her abbreviated study of those in labor, "Madam Pomfrey asked me to show arriving healers this list."

The diminutive redhead held up a piece of paper with a scrawled list of patients, listed by order of priority.

"Ginny," Lily said as she looked the list over, "I'd have expected rape to be a not-uncommon result of what amount to concentration camps run by someone like Umbridge, but there are _far_ too many pregnant women here for that to be the explanation. What happened?"

"It was a deliberate breeding program," Ginny said flatly, "We haven't interrogated Umbridge yet, but from what the women have said, it was basically a campaign to raise the magical population, and on top of that, with selective breeding, the children would eventually have all-magical grandparents, then great-grandparents, and all that rot."

"Lovely," Lily said tersely, "Apparently I'll be off helping Ashley Thompson first. Which one is she?"

Ginny pointed towards a young woman who could have been either in her late teens or early twenties, and Lily sighed, before nodding to Ginny and returning the list, then heading off to get started.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Tom had been looking for Ginny that morning, hoping to speak with her again (and see if she was as militantly against the idea of a date as she had been before, something he hadn't actually _asked_ her about yet), but hadn't found her. He had given up by lunch time, and started looking again after eating Supper, some genuine worry starting to form, when the sudden wave of refugees had stared flowing into the camp. It hadn't taken long to find out just what had happened, and that one of the Weasleys had been substantially wounded in the attack.

He'd been more than a little relieved to find that Ginny hadn't been the injured Weasley, though a little guilty that he felt _good_ that one of the twins had been injured. Most of the rest of the evening for him passed helping sort out the rescued men; some were seriously injured, some were half-starved, some were slightly deprived, and some were more or less healthy, _physically_ at least.

When Tom had decided to take a job at the Refuge, he'd mostly been thinking about earning his own independent income, and not being dependent on his father anymore, though helping out people in need had factored into his thinking as well. Nothing had prepared him for the human destruction he saw that night though, and it wasn't hard for him to pick up that what had happened to the women was _much_ worse than what had happened to the men.

By the time they were finished with psuedo-triage and assigning all the men to housing, Tom was fairly certain the only reason he hadn't had a nervous breakdown, was because so many of the men had been so _happy_ that they were finally free.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Harry hadn't intentionally brought things around to the point where nobody relied on him to organize things, or function as a logistical leader in situations like he now found himself in, but he was damn glad they had ended up that way. Technically, his presence at the Refuge was illegal, but he had needed to rest, and frankly didn't trust American security to protect Hermione against whoever it was that had attacked him the day before. While the other Hogwarts Exiles, as well as the base's other residents and staff, had dealt with the influx of refugees, Harry himself had slept, wrapped in his invisibility cloak, in the rafters of the Weasley's lodge, with an array of security charms up to inform him if anyone else came through the Floo connection to Jayuya.

Harry wasn't used to dealing with opponents more magically capable than he was, and he wasn't putting _anything_ past 'Salazar's' possible capabilities until he had solid reason not to; he was all too aware that a key part of his _own_ successes in combat was his foes continual unwillingness to believe he was as powerful and skilled as he actually was. The only people he had fought in the last year who _hadn't_ underestimated him (usually only once and fatally), were 'Salazar,' and the students who had appointed themselves as his supporting combatants.

That they were the only ones to so much as score a hit on him since Riddle's defeat, was to Harry, all the proof he needed that keeping an honest appraisal of both his foe's abilities and his own was absolutely essential to holding any chance at victory. Once he'd finished sleeping, from early evening to late morning, he ate the breakfast Dobby brought him, then went to check up on George.

He found George in the modest prefab house that the Weasley twins shared with each other, and now two of the rescuees from the concentration camp, talking with Fred about how best to spin 'survived a lightning bolt that went through Dragonhide' towards the purpose of impressing women. The actual wound itself was hidden by a set of bandages that reeked of burn-treatment potion, but aside from being laid out on the couch in the house's small living room, the twenty-year-old prankster showed no sign of being debilitated by the injury.

"Hullo Harry!" George called shortly after Harry had stepped into the room, in spite of Harry still being covered by his invisibility cloak, "Was wondering when you'd show up."

"H-how'd you know I was h-here?" Harry replied quietly.

"Secret," Fred returned good naturedly, looking in the general direction Harry had spoken from, "We'll tell you as soon as you teach use Parseltongue."

"Parselt-tongue is an inherent t-talent," Harry said flatly, "A-and I _s-still_ don't understand wh-why you're so fixated o-on the Chamber of S-s-secrets."

"Best testing grounds we ever had," George replied with a grin, "Lots of space, nothing important in there except a Basilisk in a magical coma, and easy commute to the best market for pranking supplies in England."

"...Even th-though Hogwarts has been sh-shut down for more than a y-year now," Harry sighed in resignation, "G-george, are you g-going to be alright?"

"Right as rain," George said, his expression relaxing into a more natural smile, "The Dragonhide saved my life. Knew you were powerful Harry, but didn't realize you were powerful enough to smash through Dragonhide by _accident_."

"How'd that happen anyways?" Fred asked, "I've _never_ seen you lose control of your magic before."

"It's the price I pay for doing this," Harry said quietly, "When I 'force' more precise control of my body, I'm essentially doing it by bending excessive quantities of magic actively to my will. It means that I'm 'holding' a huge proportion of active magic, just waiting to be used. It's been useful for combat in some ways, but the downside to it is that it is excessively reactive. When something triggers a reflexive response from me, rather than pulling up magic to use as I focus on what provoked me, the magic already at hand is immediately used,"

Harry paused for a moment, his jaw working and the skin around his eyes tightening.

"I-I'm sorry," He continued, slumping slightly, though the Weasleys couldn't see it, "I l-lost control, and you were n-nearly killed."

"Don't worry about it," George said seriously, wishing he could look Harry directly in the eyes, "You gave us the Dragonhide, more'n one of us probably would've died without it, and I was the one who went stupid and ignored your warning, so I figure we're even anyways."

"Thank you," Harry said quietly, "Is there anything you need before I go?"

"Yeah," Fred said with a smirk, "You should go find Hermione and your mum. They're probably worried sick wondering where you've got yourself off to."

"I will," Harry said quietly, then turned and left.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

The night past in a flurry of activity, largely centered around the Granger lab; over a thousand more refugees had joined the camp, and the strain on its resources was felt immediately. Only a handful of the men had endured serious physical deprivation and starvation, but the refugees needed regular meals as much as the camp's already-present residents, and when breakfast was served the next morning, it very quickly became clear that the camp's current food reserves wouldn't last beyond a day.

None of the stress-induced pregnancies resulted in miscarriages, mostly due to magical 'cheating' of a number of simple, but potentially serious, complications, though a handful of the new mothers wanted nothing to do with the product of their rape once the babies no longer resided in their bodies. By the night's end, most of the less-pregnant women had been sent off to less-cramped housing; five doctors from the general area had been driven in to examine the escapees, and it had only taken a few minutes for most to be judged in no urgent need of care. Those closer to giving birth remained in the lab, beds brought in to various rooms for them to rest in, where they remained under the primary care of the beleaguered non-magical physicians and the three magically-capable camp doctors.

Once the immediate crisis had passed, the members of the strike team, as well as most of the rest of the camp, crashed into an exhausted sleep, many of them not waking until well after noon the next day. For both the rescues, and the strike team, their experiences that day after they _did_ wake were far from pleasant.

((()))

For the first time in months, Ginny missed her mother's hugs. It hadn't been as bad in the heat of battle, what little heat reached her anyways, but now that the adrenaline rush had worn off, and she was no longer caught up in helping deliver babies, faces kept appearing before her mind's eye, then sprouting small, bloody holes. Ginny was pretty sure that if she asked, her mother would be more than willing to give her a hug.

She wasn't so certain that Molly Weasley would be willing to do so if she discovered _why_ her sixteen-year-old daughter wanted a hug, that said daughter had killed more than twenty people the day before.

Ginny, curled up in a ball with her arms wrapped around her legs, hiding in a tree, wasn't sure she deserved a hug right then.

((()))

Draco Malfoy had killed before, the evacuation of Hogwarts had been far from bloodless, but that battle had been defensive. Since the first cutting curse he'd cast the day before had sliced an Auror's head in half, Draco had known he'd never forget the first time he'd killed on a battlefield he walked on to as the aggressor.

He didn't feel like crying, he didn't feel like shouting, he didn't feel like ranting, or raving, or screaming at the world, he just felt _wrong_. Like there was something squirming in his gut, like his very soul rebelled against the reality that his life had become. It was a sensation that he found _intensely_ unpleasant, and as he sat on his bed in a prefabricated house manufactured by muggles, in America, far, _far_ away from the manor-house he had grown up in so self-assured superiority, he had never felt like the gap between himself and his father was larger in his life.

((()))

Luna Lovegood sat silently in one of the trees within her Arboretum, eyes closed as she leaned against the trunk. She was no stranger to death; she had been introduced to it far earlier than her peers when her mother died right in front of her eyes before the blonde even turned ten. She'd had years to wrestle with what death really meant before Fudge had even started to go off of the deep end, much less started the bloodshed, and this made things both better and worse for her.

Better, because she'd known what she was getting into when she went into the battlefield; worse, because all of the death just made her heart ache for her dead mother all the more.

In the end though, unlike the others, she knew that the heart-wrenching bleakness of death would fade with time, and she wasn't ashamed to let herself cry into the tree trunk as she grieved for all those who had died in Magical England's war with itself.

((()))

Unlike most of the other members of the strike team, Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones did not deal with the emotional fallout of slaughtering the Ministry's troops; Susan's aunt Amelia, though still in very slow recovery from curse-damage received during the evacuation of Hogwarts, was more than seasoned enough to know the girls would need someone to talk to. More, someone who knew what to _say_ in such a conversation.

Amelia Bones was more than a little surprised when Lily Potter found them before the conversation really got started, and dragged them off to assemble the rest of the strike team.

((()))

The Patil twins, unlike many of the Hogwarts Exiles, had not been accompanied by their family when they fled Hogwarts; the senior Patils had fled to India. As they had fled both before Hogwarts was invaded, and _without_ their daughters, Padma and Parvati had felt very little in the way of motivation to join their parents rather than remain with friends who had shown themselves willing to fight and bleed at their sides.

During the battle at the concentration camp in Wales, they had shared a prime view of the destruction that less than two dozen teenagers had wrought on the camp with the Weasley twins, which included seeing many, _many_ different ways that magic can destroy a man or woman's head. Neither of them went to breakfast, or lunch, and by the time Lily found them, both had thoroughly emptied what little remained in their stomachs from the previous day's meals.

((()))

Fred and George dealt with their own heart-twisting by coming up with as many morbid jokes as they could, and pointedly not mentioning any suspicious moisture around each other's eyes. When Lily found them trying to find a humorous way to compare bludgers to cannonballs (it wasn't going well), she boxed their ears and dragged them off towards where she was gathering the others.

((()))

Daphne Greengrass hadn't expected the slaughter at the Ministry's camp, and she hadn't expected death to affect her so deeply either. Unlike the other Hogwarts Exiles, she hadn't killed anyone during the school's invasion, though that was more happenstance and luck than deliberate intent, and as a consequence, her only _personal_ experience with death had been when her mother killed her father via a carefully arranged accident. It hadn't been pretty, but Daphne had never known her father as anything but an abusive, cruel tyrant, and had never mourned his death.

After the example her mother had set for the female Greengrasses when Daphne was all of seven years old, the Slytherin really hadn't expected becoming a killer herself to make her feel so sick inside. Amongst all the members of the strike team, she had the least reservations when Lily found her.

((()))

Katie Bell dealt with conflicted feelings over the outcome of the previous day's battle the way she dealt with most stress, by going flying. It was a cruddy day for flying, heavy clouds cutting off the sunlight and the occasional light shower of Spring rain regularly soaking her, but the weather suited her mood. The flying didn't really help come to any sort of philosophical conclusion regarding all the death and killing she had taken part in the previous day, but it wasn't supposed to. It was supposed to help her burn through the confusing emotions, and it did an adequate job of that, if not so much as she would have preferred.

((()))

Alone amongst the members of the strike team, Tracy Davis experience the night after the raid had a greater impact on her than the raid itself. She, like the others, felt disgust, revulsion, and heartsick at both the sheer amount of blood spilled in the attack, and the conditions the camp's prisoners had been found in. Unlike the others, when she got her hands dirty helping pregnant women both clean themselves and change into clean clothes, she discovered something that her upbringing amongst the social elite of Magical England had very directly kept her separated from.

Tracy Davis _liked_ helping other people directly, with her own magic, and even more with her own hands. She found fulfillment when she held a crying fourteen-year old who was four months pregnant, and calmed the girl until she was able to sleep. She belatedly recognized a bittersweet smile on her face when she helped an exhausted thirty-five year old pregnant Witch into a simple, but clean white dress, and the woman smiled at her in tired relief.

Finding happiness in such 'menial' tasks clashed with everything her cultural and familial upbringing had taught her to value, and if she'd been any less exhausted when the work was done, she would have been kept awake even later trying to reconcile the conflict. As it was, Lily Potter found the girl sleeping, and elected to let the Slytherin girl rest and return for her later, after she had collected the other members of the strike team.

((()))

Blaise Zabini was quite possibly the least prepared to deal with the emotional fallout of all the killing of any member of the strike team; when Lily found him, he was just sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the wall. When he didn't respond to Lily's attempts to speak to him, she resigned herself to levitating him to the space she'd sent the others to meet her at, and after a few more attempts at verbal communication, did just that.

((()))

Dean Thomas, unlike many of the other students who had attached themselves to Harry, had an excellent relationship with his family, partly because of his father's almost-imperturbable temper and deep well of patience. Perhaps because she was aware of this fact, Lily came for Dean last, by which point he and his father had already discussed the heart of the matter, and the young man was in a largely introspective state of mind.

At his father's advice, he accompanied Lily anyways, more to bond with his friends than out of any real need for further counsel.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Once she had all the members of the strike force (and Hermione) gathered in Luna's Arboretum, and Harry slinking about beneath his invisibility cloak, Lily looked the various young men and women around her over critically. None of them were in what could be called prime condition, but Ginny, who had clearly been crying, and the Patil twins, who were just shy of clinging to each other, easily looked to be the worst off of the lot, even if Luna had clearly been crying as well.

"I've brought you all here today," Lily said quietly, "To have a talk with you, one that I had with Harry and Hermione after our fight against Voldemort and the Death Eaters at the end of the Triwizard Tournament."

Hermione shifted uncomfortably where she was seated next to Luna; _that_ subject matter brought up all kinds of unpleasant memories for her.

"Harry had been in some ugly situations before then," Lily continued seriously, "But that was the first time he killed. Like all of you did yesterday, he also killed a _lot_ of people."

"I killed almost two dozen people yesterday," Blaise said hollowly, raising his empty gaze to look directly at Lily, "Most of them right after I stared at their face."

Lily closed her eyes for a moment, and sighed. When her eyes opened again, they were tired, and filled with sorrow.

"In a very literal sense," She said gently, "You have looked death in the eye. Something I know none of you enjoyed."

A number of silent nods came in response to her words.

"Death," Lily said quietly, but firmly, "Is something that never should have been a part of this world, and no matter how young or old you may be, no matter how much experience you have with it, it will _never_ be something your heart wants to accept."

She paused for a moment, and started pacing back and forth.

"I've had more intimate experience with death than any of the rest of you," she continued, "Between my experiences fighting in the war against Voldemort, and the thirteen years I spent as a disembodied Spirit, keeping watch over Harry. I very literally stood on the precipice of death as a decade. I've only spoken of it before with Harry and Hermione, but the state I existed in was not self-sustaining or constant, I could very easily have slipped across the precipice, and died in Truth during that time."

She stopped, and swept a demanding gaze across the assembled younger Witches and Wizards.

"Only one thing kept me anchored to this world," She said firmly, "And that was my Love for my son. Love was an integral part of the magic that I sacrificed my body to fuel, and both the manner in which it anchored me to him and in which it protected him was tied to my Love for him."

Her expression became grim an harsh for a moment, her jaw flexing with emotion, before she calmed and continued.

"This isn't the 'love' that's really nothing more than an emotion, a feeling. This isn't some kind of 'love' that is supposed to protect others or conquer via being 'nice' or 'soft,' though being gentle and kind even to enemies at the right time and place is an _essential_ part of it. This is a Love of _decision_, of _commitment_, that burns with a fierce and _protective_ nature."

Lily swept her gaze across the strike team again, seeing that she had their undivided attention.

"When Vernon Dursley, my sister's brute of a husband, attacked my son with a golf club, and tried to smash his brains out, I attacked him, and nearly killed him, _to protect my son,_" Lily's fists clenched, and a faint haze, an expression of instinctive magic, leapt up around her as her fiery gaze met the eyes of each student in turn, "I'm not an Auror, or a Soldier, or in any way a fighter by preference, I'm a spell researcher and a _healer_, but if someone I Love is threatened, I _will_ fight to protect them. My husband, God Bless his heart, _died_ fighting to protect Harry and I.

"This all ties very directly into all the killing from yesterday. It may not fit your understanding of the world as yet, but from what I know of all you young men and women, the reason you killed yesterday was out of _love for your fellow man._"

"_What?_" Daphne Greengrass, sheer disbelief and confusion dragging the question out of her.

"We didn't go to the camp because we wanted to kill Fudge's Aurors," Luna said softly, "We went because we wanted to rescue the prisoners, and stop something that was wrong."

"Exactly," Lily said emphatically, nodding deeply towards the young Lovegood, "You weren't setting out with the desire to kill, you were setting out with the desire to _protect_, even if you ended up killing in order to do so."

"I w-went in with the intent t-to kill," Harry's voice called quietly, emerging from apparently-empty space a few feet to Lily's side.

Lily sighed, then walked over and wrapped her arms around the invisible figure of Harry Potter.

"Yes, you did," She said gently, "But that was because you knew that in order to keep Fudge's toadies from just setting up another camp, you would need to kill a great number of them. And beyond that, as soon as you found one of their rape-rooms, you knew that the guards at that camp would have been sentenced to death for war crimes by any respectable government you handed them over to anyways. Even though you went on the attack with the intent to kill, the _reason_ you intended to kill, was to protect people from further predation on the part of psychotic and sociopathic bigots."

Harry trembled quietly in Lily's grip, though the others couldn't see it.

"Most militaries," Lily continued, "Teach their soldiers to dehumanize their enemies, in order to make it easier for their soldiers to kill. It's better than soldiers locking up in battle, and getting killed themselves, possibly losing battles and a war to evil men, but that's not _right_ either."

"'The tragedy isn't that you killed someone,'" Dean Thomas said quietly, clearly quoting another's words and drawing the others' attention to the normally-quiet boy, "'But that someone was so far gone that killing them was the only plausible option.'"

"Yeah," Lily said sadly, much of the fire fading to be replaced by sorrow, "If a handful of men went mad, and tried to attack and rape a group of women right in front of all of us, we could easily overpower and stop them without resorting to kill them, but when an entire army of villains forms, when a _war_ is on, you can't treat it like a police action any longer. When it's _war_, you can't just try to arrest your enemies, and even during peace, sometimes criminals try to resist arrest, and need to be killed."

Silence passed for some time after that, and Lily studied each of the young soldiers in front of her in turn, while gently running one of her hands up and down Harry's back, slowly soothing away his trembling.

"In the end," Lily said quietly, "Fudge and those who followed him decided to be the villains. They made your choice, and you had the choice to either let them continue to kill, enslave, and rape unchecked, or kill _them_ to stop them. Even though they became the villains, it _is_ still a tragedy that they died, that they chose to turn themselves into monsters that needed to be put down, and death is horrifying even when it is _necessary_. It's still okay to grieve for their lives lost, because you grieve for what they could have been, what they _should_ have been."

Lily sighed again, then sat down, pulling her invisible son into her lap.

"Death itself is the ultimate enemy," Lily said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper, "Our enemies chose death over life, you simply chose to make that death apply to them rather than someone else. Death triumphed over their lives, and we are left to mourn that they were lost to Life and Love, and move on to live our own lives in Love."

Little else was said amongst them that day.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Over the next week, camp Sakakawea dealt with a near-breakdown of logistics, and Paul Wright went broke. The doctors brought in from the area, rotating in and out, provided their services for free, but purchasing the supplies they needed ate up a considerable portion of the camp's discretionary funds, and providing food for another thousand men, women, and children ate through the rest, as well as Wright's personal savings.

By the time his superiors in the State Department finally deigned to respond to his requests and allot more money for food and other essentials, it had been nine days since the new refugees had arrived. On the downside, the State Department refused to reimburse Wright for expenses he had paid to aid what were at the time people on US soil illegally. On the upside, since a week had lapsed without response from his superiors, the quirks of law and government procedure empowered the ranking member of the State Department (Wright) to grant asylum as needed, and he found some personal satisfaction in granting the new refugees said asylum en-masse. Satisfaction both for good deeds done, and for sticking his superiors with the financial responsibility for another thousand people, even if they tried to ignore it.

His superiors retaliated by refusing to double his manpower alongside his budget, leaving him with less than fifty people (including volunteers) to manage a refugee camp now boasting two thousand and eighty-three inhabitants.

After a chat with Minerva McGonagall about how if sufficiently unruly, _no one_ was too old to be bent over the knee and spanked, Paul decided to view the manpower shortage as a challenge, rather than a burden.

((()))

"Harry."

Harry wasn't surprised to hear his mother's voice; she had demonstrated a persistent ability to find him no matter where he hid or what concealment he was under, an ability he suspected was a combination of motherly intuition, and the sacrifice ritual that had bound her to protecting him years ago. That she had bothered to climb one of the trees outside of Granger Lab to come and get him, was more than a little bit odd. Harry had selected that particular Chestnut tree because it gave him the best possible view of the lab Hermione worked in most of the time (though now she mostly spent time helping the pregnant women lodged there), and it was close enough that he could readily sense magic-use in the parts of the lab/dorm he couldn't see.

He would have preferred to respond to his mother non-verbally, but he was still hidden beneath his invisibility cloak, as he had been since he'd come to the refuge through the Floo from Jayuya.

"Yes mum?" He said quietly.

"You've not been more than fifty yards from Hermione since the day after the attack," Lily said quietly, "The others told me about your duel with some unknown but extremely powerful Wizard at the camp, and that apparently Nicholas Flamel showed up briefly at the end of the engagement. I've been told I'm a genius by quite a few people, but I wouldn't have to be to connect the dots. One of them threatened Hermione, didn't they?"

_Sometimes_, Harry thought quietly, _My mother is altogether too perceptive._

"Yes," He said aloud, "Th-the man who went by S-salazar wants the Stone, and p-pulled where it is out of my m-m-mind."

Lily growled, the sound emanating from low in her throat, and swung across to the branch Harry was sitting in, before pulling him forcibly into a hug. As she did so, she was reminded _again_ that her son was, in fact, shorter than her, and judging by his growth pattern, most likely would be for the rest of her life. Sometimes it was very hard for to not hate Vernon Dursley and her sister.

"Harry," She said firmly but gently, "I understand why you are keeping yourself concealed her, but that kind of violation is _not_ something you should keep to yourself. Do you have any idea how upset Hermione will be if she finds you closing yourself off again?"

Harry's only response was to curl in on himself slightly, his invisible posture becoming more defensive.

"Oh, my son," Lily said sadly as she wrapped herself further around him and lay her cheek against his head, "You don't have to fight this alone."

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Hermione dearly wanted to slap Harry in that moment. If it had not been for a decision she made years prior, after discovering how he had been abused by his uncle, to _never_ strike Harry, she would have. Instead she settled for giving him her very best scowl and glare.

"Harry James Potter," she declared, "It's bad enough that this is someone coming after _me_, but you kept it a secret from me and your mum _both_. I'm not nosy enough to think I have a right to _all_ of your secrets, but you need to talk about things like this to _someone_."

Harry's head, the only part of him visible during their current conversation in the girl's bathroom, looked appropriately guilty and penitent. Hermione glared for another few seconds, just to make _sure_ that the point had gotten across.

"Right then," Hermione continued, relaxing her glare and softening her tone, "Now that all that nonsense is out of the way, what untapped resources do you have available to bring against this villain?"

"Er," Harry said, somewhat thrown off by Hermione's abrupt conversational shift, "G-guns?"

"I thought you already tried using guns against him," Hermione said, a hint of impatience leaking into her voice.

"_G-gatling_ guns," Harry clarified.

Hermione _smiled_.

((()))

AN: I'd like to add a few more things to this chapter, but really, this is the best natural end point for some time. The next chapter's going to have a great deal of exposition involved in it, and unless that runs crazy-long, should have at least the start of explaining what happened to Hogwarts, and why so many people are in exile. Some of that and this chapter's events will be slightly asynchronous, but not in any particularly significant way.


	11. Chapter 10

Hero Harry Chapter Ten.

AN: And for those of you who've been waiting, we finally get to part of the history involving the battle of Hogwarts. Also, I realized partway through this chapter that Fudge, while chatting with Malfoy a few chapters back, never actually revealed what it was the Malfoy ordered him to do. So, when you hear about some of the stupid things Fudge did in this chapter, keep in mind that he was essentially under Imperious-orders to _do stupid things_ specifically to raise hell.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

When Tom finally tracked Ginny down, he found her in the Granger lab, sitting on a bed and holding one of the newborns while the baby's mother took a shower.

"Ginny!" He called as he entered the converted bedroom and immediately strode towards her, "I've been looking all over for you, what happened the other day?"

Ginny looked up and saw the young American man walking towards her, worry on his face and concern in his eyes, and for the first time in her life, her heart quivered for someone other than Harry Potter. The reaction stunned her, especially coming on the heels of the previous day's emotional fallout, and she froze, staring up at Tom with wide eyes.

This did nothing to alleviate the American's concern on her behalf.

"Ginny?" He called more urgently as he reached the girl and cautiously reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder.

She flinched when he touched her shoulder, snapping out of her moment of startled shock, glanced up at him, then looked away, blushing.

"Are you alright?" Tom asked, his voice full of worry as he leaned around to try to catch her gaze, "I heard you were part of the attack."

Ginny turned her gaze down to the baby she held, who was looking up at her in infantile confusion, which for some reason made her giggle. Taking a moment to gather her thoughts, she smiled sadly down at the baby before looking up at Tom.

"Not really," Ginny said softly, fighting another blush when she saw the worry in his expression, "But I will be."

Tom's worry shifted to confusion, and Ginny laughed.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Lily, like every other resident of the camp, had been forced to share her quarters with some of the new refugees; given the construction abilities of competent mages and readily-available supply of wood, the housing issue wasn't expected to be a problem for more than a month, but even for Wizards, construction took time. In the meantime, she had ended up with a blonde Londoner named Seras and two Japanese girls, one named Tabane, the other of whom would give no name, rooming with her. After being introduced to Seras, Lily was fairly certain that Harry had somehow arranged for the three girls to end up with her.

Lily didn't see much of Seras the first day after the raid (or any of Tabane and her sister), due to spending most of her time tracking down the strike team, then speaking with them. When she returned that evening, she found Seras trying to coax the Japanese girls out from under their blankets to eat something.

"Hello?" Lily called as she looked into the small bedroom all three of the girls currently occupied, "What's going on?"

"I haven't been able to get them to eat," Seras said worriedly, pulling away from the bed and standing to face Lily, "Nothing since this morning. I'm worried that they're in some kind of shock."

"I've no idea what they, in particular, have been through," Lily said slowly, gesturing for Seras to follow her out of the bedroom, then into the kitchen, "So I couldn't really tell you."

"Oh!" Seras said as they stepped into the kitchen, eyes widening as she studied Lily in better light, "Um, we were part of the group kept in the holding cells for virgins," She started hesitantly, "But... Um, but... Well... When some of the guards heard that Fudge was dead, they decided they didn't have any reason not to take out their grudge on Tabane anymore..."

The girl trailed off, and Lily sighed sadly before speaking.

"They raped her purely out of spite, didn't they?" Lily said quietly.

"Yes," Seras said miserably, "Tabane shared a cell with me, and I was just _stuck_ there, and couldn't do _anything_ while-"

She was cut off by Lily enveloping her in an abrupt hug, holding the girl tightly against herself.

"_Not_ your fault," Lily said firmly, before softening her tone and continuing, "What else happened while you were down there?"

"N-not much," Seras stuttered, surprised at the tears forming in her own eyes, "They didn't get much past groping me or ripping off the little girl's dress before H-harry showed u-up..."

Removed from her self-imposed duty of trying to take care of the two Japanese girls, and pulled into both traumatic memories and comforting arms, Seras dissolved into tears.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"...After that the Minstry forces broke, and started to flee," Ginny finished quietly, "All that was left at that point was evacuating the camp, and watching Harry fight in the sky."

The two had moved out into the hall while Ginny had recounted the attack to Tom, returning the baby Ginny had been holding to the infant's mother once she had finished her shower, and continuing the story in a (slightly) more private setting.

"Honestly," Tom said, somewhat bewildered, "I don't know if I can really understand that properly. I've seen some pretty messed up people, and dealing with some of the more abused people who came in the other day was really ugly, but my mind treats the kind of thing you're talking about more like a video game, and less like real life," He paused for a moment before adding, "I'm sorry. I've never killed anyone, or seen anyone get killed. I can't imagine what it would have been like killing for the first time, and seeing _that much_ death on top of it all."

"Oh, that wasn't the first time I killed," Ginny said bitterly, "But it was a lot different at Hogwarts. We were fighting to run away, and the Ministry's forces were the ones attacking us, trying to capture or kill us all," Ginny paused for a moment, taking a deep breathe, before continuing, "And we didn't have to see the bodies. I didn't have to look through a scope at each man's face before I killed him."

Tom couldn't really think of anything to say to that, so he didn't say anything, just reached over to lay a hand on Ginny's shoulder.

"Hogwarts was still pretty bad though," Ginny continued quietly, "A lot of people died there; at least the attack on the ministry's camp was extremely one-sided..." Ginny trailed off as her heart squirmed in her again, "I guess that made it feel more like a slaughter, and less like a battle. Harry was right, most people really do have no idea how to fight with magic."

"What do you mean?" Tom asked.

"We should go out to the quarry," Ginny said after a moment's thought, "It's best if I just show you."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

By the time Seras calmed down, Lily had had more than enough time to wandlessly conduct the preparation of tea around her kitchen, her arms occupied with holding the blonde teen while she cried.

"Tea?" She asked quietly, once Seras had calmed enough to relax her grip, and take a step back.

"Please," Seras said hoarsely, "I haven't had a cuppa in what feels like years."

Lily nodded, and levitated a prepared tea-tray over to the table, gesturing for Seras to take a seat as she did so. A few minutes passed quietly, only the final preparations and consumption of tea generating any noise; Seras took the time to regather her composure, Lily took the time to rest, as she'd had little opportunity to do so in the last few days.

"Thank you," Seras said quietly, staring down into her tea cup, too embarrassed to meet Lily's gaze, "For taking care of me, and letting Tabane and her sister stay with you."

"You're more than welcome," Lily said with a gentle smile and considerable warmth, "I try to help all those I can, but I'm fairly sure my son arranged for you to room with me here, and if he thinks you need my attention or care, he's almost certainly right."

"Your son?" Seras asked, glancing cautiously up at Lily.

"Harry Potter," Lily said with a proud maternal smile, "I'm sure you've heard of him."

"He's rescued me personally three times," Seras said, looking away again, face burning with shame, "He deserved better than how I treated him last time."

Lily leaned forward, stretching her arms across the table to lay her hands over Seras' rather trembly fingers.

"If you'd done something truly terrible," Lily said gently, "He wouldn't have rescued you the second time."

"Doesn't make it right," Seras said, folding in on herself, her body-language screaming 'dejection' as she spoke, "I saw what he did over the camp, what the camp looked like. He deserves better than little girls running away from him, scared."

"Don't make me come over there and hug you again," Lily said seriously, "I know that was a painful moment for Harry, but it'll do you no good to let guilt consume you. I'll bring my son to speak with you tomorrow if he's still in the area, if you feel like you're ready to speak with him."

Seras quivered slightly, remembering the younger teen's intense demeanor, but shook it off, and steeled herself to face him again.

"I'd appreciate that, Misses Potter," Seras said more calmly, "I owe it to him to apologize to his face, at the least."

"That would be for the best," Lily said with a gentle smile, then allowed the kitchen to lapse into silence for a time again.

Time slowly passed, and aside from Lily preparing a fresh pot of tea, it passed in silence, both of them absorbed in their own thoughts, but sharing some small companionship.

"How do you do it?" Seras eventually said, a little nervously, "Deal with all of this shite, and stay so calm, keep from breaking down, I mean, you didn't even get angry with me for hurting your son!"

"Ah," Lily said with a bittersweet smile, meeting Seras' eyes with a painfully honest gaze, "Now _that_ is a question that most don't really want to know the answer to, because it touches on the very foundation and definition of this thing we call 'Love.' Are you sure you want to know?"

Seras heart shivered within her again, seeing the painful emotions roiling behind Lily's eyes, and almost turned away. But then she remembered seeing a very similar openness and honesty in a set of eyes that shared a color with Lily's, but rested within a younger and more masculine face. And she remembered the guilt she'd felt ever since she'd turned away from the other gaze.

"Yes," Seras said, her voice starting out nervous, but turning to determination, "Yes, I think I do."

"Well then," Lily said seriously, "I'll tell you."

((()))

_Camp Director's Office, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"Headmistress McGonagall," Paul Wright said dead seriously, staring the woman straight in the eye, "I have never seen a more beautiful sight in my life."

The sight he was referring to, was a list of volunteers amongst her students to join the camp's workforce, unpaid, a list that was nearly a hundred names long.

"How do you get so much cooperation out of your students?" Paul asked, intensely curious.

"Respect," McGonagall said simply, "I treat my students with respect, and an expectation of maturity. It does not always work, but with the majority, it results in them treating me with respect in return, and maturing."

"I wish I could say the same of the politicians I work for," Wright said, shaking his head wryly, "I'd liken it to dealing with grade-schoolers, but your students are more mature than most of them. Either way, this should get us back on our feet, pronto."

((()))

_Abandoned Quarry, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"Alright," Tom said as he and Ginny squared off across the quarry's floor, "Show me what Harry taught you."

"Right," Ginny said, brandishing her primary wand, "First off, do you know what determines how magically powerful someone is?"

"Not entirely," Tom said, shrugging, but keeping his eyes carefully on Ginny, "From what I've seen, some people are just naturally stronger than others, and some people's power grows differently than others."

"Some people _are_ born with more power at base," Ginny said with a nod, "Even Hermione hasn't figured out why yet, but that doesn't really matter much. The most important part of magical strength, is that it's just like a muscle; the more you work it, the stronger it gets."

"...That seems like the sort of thing that people would notice fairly quickly," Tom said dubiously.

"It does," Ginny said, shrugging carelessly, "I couldn't tell you why most people don't seem to, but I know that the only reason _I_ didn't until Harry taught me otherwise, is that everyone assumed you were born with a certain amount of power, so I did too."

"...I suppose that would explain why less than two dozen high-school students managed to break many times their number of adult Witches and Wizards. How much practice or training does it take to have a meaningful impact on your power?"

"I don't know the exact amount," Ginny said with a shrug, "But the more, the better. I'm pretty sure that Harry is _always_ practicing, and the lot of us who fight with him do at least four hours a day, five days a week."

"That's pretty extreme," Tom admitted, "After what I've seen you do though," He nodded towards the wall of the quarry that Ginny had half-shattered in one night, "I'd have to say it looks like it's worth it."

"Power's only the half of it," Ginny said, "Let's use this."

So saying, she summoned a small pile of rock to the floor of the Quarry in front of her, piled it up, then transfigured it into a quasi-human effigy of a man in black robes with a white skull mask.

"This is what Death Eaters dressed like," Ginny explained, "Back before Harry wiped the rest of them out. Most of the combat magic I know is pretty much lethal to rookies, so you'll be trying to protect the dummy, instead of me attacking you directly. If I don't win the first five rounds with a single spell, I'll owe you a dozen Galleons."

Tom stepped around to stand alongside the transfigured dummy, and resisted the urge to ask for a date as his winning condition instead.

"And if you win?" He asked.

"You don't owe me anything," Ginny snorted, "That'd be like making a bet on a foot race with a four-year-old. They can run, but they're _not_ going to win."

"Let's go," Tom said flatly, raising his wand; he knew she was better than him, but _that_ was downright insulting.

"Okay," Ginny said, flicking her wand sharply.

Tom raised a shield in preparation for Ginny's spell; a spike of stone erupted from the ground directly beneath the dummy, running it through.

"That's one," Ginny said calmly as Tom gawked at the spike, which had completely bypassed his shield, "We didn't get to use that one at the camp, the Aurors and Hitwizards were all wearing Dragonhide."

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"I'm here to see a Hermione Granger," The sharply-dressed young man said with a charming smile.

"And you would be?" Daphne Greengrass, the only person on 'watch' at the lab's entrance that evening, asked.

"Nicholas Flamel," He replied, his smile turning into more of a grin, "Perhaps you've heard of me?"

"Entirely possible," Daphne said, raising an eyebrow non-chalantly, "I suppose I could ask Miss Granger if she has the time for an exceptionally youthful octo-centarian."

The blond Slytherin retreated into the building proper, and Flamel spent the next few minutes amusing himself by spending three out of every ten seconds staring at the exact location where Harry Potter's invisible head resided, and wondering what the young power-house's reaction was like. Before too long, however, Daphne returned, and ushered him into the building.

"Hermione will be happy to see you," She said as she escorted him towards the only lab still in use as an actual lab, "Though I do believe she intends to test whether or not you actually are who you claim to be."

"I appreciate the warning," Nicholas said cheerily, "Though I would have expected nothing less from one of her reputation. I don't suppose her uncle would happen to be in as well?"

"He is, as a matter of fact," Daphne said, one eyebrow raised in surprise, "I'm rather surprised you know so much about this operation."

"It's all common knowledge around the camp," Nicholas said dismissively, "And the camp is hardly restricted access, so long as you're magical."

Further conversation was truncated by their arrival at the only active, lab, the lab housing the Tiberium for study. The lab was more than cramped; one entire half of it was completely filled with carefully packed-in equipment, none of it in use, but lacking a home in the other labs that had been converted for temporary residential use. A great deal more equipment had been shrunk and stored on shelves mounted on the room's walls, pieces of hardware that wasn't as sensitive to magic exposure, or requiring extremely fine calibration, as the diagnostic and manipulative equipment that occupied so much of the lab's floor space.

Present in the lab when Daphne and Nicholas entered, were Hermione Granger, George Granger, and Marie, George Granger's research assistant. Flamel immediately zeroed in on the junior Granger, crossing the lab and extending his hand in greeting.

"Salutations, Miss Granger," He said, his demeanor now dead serious, "I am Nicholas Flamel, and I believe we need to have words about the Philosopher's Stone."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"Okay," Tom panted, flat on his back on the quarry floor, "Maybe you weren't being condescending."

Ginny had not only taken him in one move in the first five exchanges, she had done it in the first _twelve_, and after twenty, he had still failed to stop her again, much less prevent her _second_ spell from destroying the dummy. The dummy had been impaled, bludgeoned, crushed, slashed, frozen, burned, electrocuted, partially-dissolved, snapped in half, and a myriad of variations on and combinations of all of the above.

Tom had been impressed with Ginny's power after their first visit to the quarry; that respect had been kicked up a notch, and joined by comparable respect for her skill, and _creativity_. He had never even _thought_ of that many ways to destroy something, and was more than a little glad that Ginny had thought to have them use a dummy; it wasn't something that would have occurred to _him_. Well, occurred _before_ this fight; it was certainly something he'd think of _now_.

"Get what I mean about most people don't know how to fight with magic?" Ginny said with an impish smirk, standing over Tom and the exploded remains of the dummy.

"Yes," Tom said, "Yes I do. Remember what I said about specialized economies, and 'not expected to do this' thinking?"

Ginny nodded.

"Yeah," Tom said with a self-deprecating grin, "I didn't actually expect to do this."

Ginny giggled, something Tom was more than a little pleased to see, considering the grim events of the last few days, as well as the fell mood she had been in earlier.

"Of course," Ginny said with a scowl, "It takes a dozen or more of us to land a _single_ hit on Harry before he takes us down."

_And there goes the good mood_, Tom thought irritably, before quenching the irritation to focus on the girl in front of him.

"Part of me wants to say that nobody's _that_ good," Tom said cautiously, "But considering you just whipped me but good, proving that _you_ are better than I thought anyone could be half an hour ago, instead I'll ask _how_ he can possibly be that good."

"Two- no, _three_ things," Ginny said, "First, he's overwhelmingly powerful, second, he keeps himself more mobile than you would believe, and third, he's incredibly skilled and accurate with his magic."

"How powerful is 'overwhelmingly powerful'?" Tom asked as he began pulling himself to his feet.

"The only times I've ever seen him actually push his limits," Ginny said quietly, "Was when he attacked Dumbledore when he was twelve, during the Battle of Hogwarts, and the other day when he was fighting in the air over the camp."

"He _beat Dumbledore_ when he was _twelve?_" Tom said incredulously.

"No," Ginny said, shaking her head sharply, "He _attacked _Dumbledore. Harry grew up abused, and when he found out that Dumbledore was the one who sent him to where he grew up, Harry attacked him in a fit of rage. I was eleven at the time, and it was scary just watching."

Tom studied Ginny intently for a few moments, before pulling himself the rest of the way to his feet.

"I can see that Harry's made a big impression on you since day one," He said tactfully, "Unfortunately, that still doesn't give me a very good idea of just how powerful he is or isn't."

"I suppose the best comparison would be when Hogwarts was attacked," Ginny said, "The other students, the Ministry's Aurors, and pretty much everyone else, were a lot closer to skill levels you're probably familiar with," Ginny sighed, "I suppose it'd probably be best if I just told you the whole story, start to finish."

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Hermione Granger had not been surprised in the least to discover that Nicholas Flamel possessed a comprehensive array of privacy magics, and was exceptionally skilled in their use. That he had specifically extended the area of his privacy wards to include Harry _had_ surprised her; she'd known he was _somewhere_ nearby, but her situational awareness wasn't sharp enough to locate Harry when he wanted to hide. Apparently, Flamel didn't suffer from the same deficit.

"You can remove the cloak now, Mister Potter," Flamel said seriously, staring at a particular point in space, "In deference to your status here, I've not revealed your presence to the others, but I know you're there, in a way I suspect is quite similar to how you sense the presence of other Wizards yourself. My privacy spells will ensure you are neither visible nor audible to those outside of the barrier."

Silence passed for several moments, but eventually Harry's face, and then the rest of him became visible.

"You are aware," He said stonily, "That the only reasons the others consented for you to raise this barrier around yourself and Hermione, was the assumption that I would also be present within?"

"It seemed the most logical assumption," Flamel said seriously, "We have business to discuss, which concerns both of you, business involving _these_."

Flamel withdrew a lumpy red stone from an inner pocket in his jacket, and Harry could _immediately_ sense the unique magic of a Philosopher's Stone radiating from the object. Considering just how much power was radiating from Flamel himself, not to mention from Harry, it said a great deal about the Stone's own essence that it was still detectable.

"Five years ago," Flamel said quietly, "You stole one of these from within the bowels of Hogwarts, were Albus had foolishly utilized a certain pattern of defenses based on certain assumptions about you and your character."

Flamel paused briefly, giving Harry and Hermione a chance to respond, but neither did.

"Regardless of how you reached and acquired the previous Stone," Flamel continued, "I believe that there are certain things you should know about its properties, beyond that which is public and common knowledge."

Hermione pulled a small notepad and pen out of her pockets.

"First," Flamel said quietly, "Is the reason why only I have ever been able to craft a Philosopher's Stone in recorded history," He paused for a moment to fix Harry with a harsh glare, lifting the Stone he held in his hand slightly, "This Stone is the product of Albus Dumbledore willingly sacrificing his life."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"The Battle of Hogwarts was technically the _third_ Battle of Hogwarts, depending on how you want to count," Ginny said, "Fudge tried to send Aurors in twice beforehand to enforce compliance, but it was only a few dozen, McGonagall and Harry dealt with them pretty easily. From January until April, Hogwarts was basically under siege, a strange siege though."

"How so?" Tom asked.

"It wasn't walls that kept the Ministry people out," Ginny said, "It was the Wards. When the defensive Wards are put up at full strength, you can only get in through the gates, or as we later found out, one of the secret passages that's tied into the Ward scheme. In some ways, the siege was exciting; there was a sort of feeling of sticking it to the big bad Ministry, we had the Boy-Who-Lived on our side, and we pretty much felt like we were invincible.

"There were some ugly parts though. Some of the older boys, especially the Purebloods, and two of the older girls, decided that Fudge's insane law and the army camped outside of Hogwarts' gates, meant that they could 'claim' their spouse while still in Hogwarts."

"That would be the retarded 'marriage law' I've heard some of the Hogwarts Exiles talking about?" Tom asked curiously.

"Yes," Ginny said harshly, "The thing was unbelievably stupid. It encouraged us to get married as young as _thirteen_, made it a legal _requirement_ when we were _fifteen_, and further _required_ that we start having babies when we were _sixteen_."

"That's not just stupid," Tom said, faintly nauseous, "That's _sick_. Pregnancies aren't _safe_ that young, not to mention maturity issues."

"There's a reason we fought it," Ginny said bitterly, "Some of the stupid lumps still in the castle thought it was just an excuse to get into our pants though, and one girl nearly got raped. McGonagall snapped that boy's wand, and kicked him out into the Forbidden Forest; we never found out if he managed to escape or not. After that, things got a little crazy; Harry nearly went ballistic, and ended up spending most of his time patrolling the corridors. He caught one of the seventh-year boys trying something; Harry emasculated the boy, almost killed him, probably because he'd already started raping the girl.

"After that, about half the girls started carrying these," Ginny pulled a small golden coin, a modified Galleon, out of her pocket, "Hermione enchanted them, and we wear them against our skin. They detect two things, whether or not the flesh of our privates is exposed to open air, and whether or not a boy is within ten feet of us. If both were true, or if it was removed from contact with our skin, it'd react with the larger coin Harry carried, and lead him to us. About half of the girls in the school were wearing these before things ended, and Harry had us sleeping in the Chamber of Secrets."

A bittersweet smile spread across Ginny's face.

"The twins used to use it as their testing grounds, they called it 'Harry's Harem' once we appropriated it from them."

Tom snorted, a sound half-made of humor, half derision.

"Eventually, one of the Slytherin boys, we're not sure who, got fed up enough with being kept out of Witches' bloomers that he revealed one of the secret passages, one of the ones that was _actually_ secret, to Fudge's goons, and they were all over the inside of the castle before we even knew what was happening. Worse, Fudge had gone and hired every mercenary he could from the continent, and instead of maybe a hundred or two Aurors, there were more than a _thousand_ of the buggers, some of them very skilled."

Ginny stopped speaking, her expression turning pensive as she thought for a while.

"I only saw bits and pieces of the whole thing myself," She continued eventually, "Like I said before, some of the people we fought died to spells I cast, but we were always in a fighting retreat, so I didn't really have to look at the bodies. Eventually, everyone who could had all retreated into the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry, Lily, and McGonagall held the entrance to the Chamber while the rest of the teachers started making portkeys. There were still thousands of us down there, Harry had run out of ammunition for his muggle weapons, and from what the Headmistress and Lily said, the mercenaries were actually pretty smart about their attack, using layered shields to protect themselves, and just trying to wear Harry down by weight of numbers.

"Eventually, all the teachers and other Witches and Wizards down there exhausted themselves, but we still didn't have enough Portkeys, so Harry and the others retreated, collapsing the tunnel down to the Chamber behind them. It only held them off for a while, but it was long enough for Lily, Mcgonagall, and mostly Harry to finish making Portkeys. McGonagall lowered the ward against Portkeys, and we all rode the Portkeys to Puerto Rico, and that was _almost_ the end of it."

Ginny looked at Tom, to see if he had anything to say, but he just nodded at her, encouraging her to continue.

"We rode the International Floo from Puerto Rico to some place in Virginia, where we all applied for asylum. There were a load more of us than the government-types were ready to handle, and things were pretty hectic. They mostly treated us well, getting everybody processed and moved further into the country over a few hours, but apparently, somebody higher up in the Department of Magic had heard of Harry, and decided he wasn't to be allowed in the country without inhibitors on his magic. Lily thinks they heard from Malfoy, or maybe one of the handful of Death Eaters who was wounded, not killed, at the Little Hangleton graveyard, about how many people Harry killed there, and decided he was too dangerous to let in."

Bitter outrage burned in Ginny's Eyes and voice as she continued.

"Harry had been fighting for _hours_, then nearly exhausted himself making Portkeys to get _all_ of the survivors out. He didn't want to accept them, not surprising considering how his life has been, but Lily and Hermione were starting to talk him into it, when one of the border agents decided to get pushy, and tried to physically _force_ the cuffs on Harry. I _saw_ that happen, and the idiot is lucky Harry didn't _kill_ him. I mean, I'm only sixteen, and _I _know it's stupid to get pushy with someone who's just left the battlefield, especially someone that powerful."

"It seems pretty stupid to me too," Tom offered quietly, "But there are a _lot_ of stupid people out there."

"Harry 'only' used a stunner on the idiot, shattering the restraining cuffs in the process," Ginny continued, nodding at Tom as she did so, "It was still so powerful it stopped the idiot's heart temporarily. _That_ buggered things up right good, and it took Lily and Hermione both screaming at Harry to get him to leave before the Americans could arrest him. He put on his invisibility cloak, and I'm pretty sure he used his broom to just fly out from under the national Wards. And that _is_ the end of the story, as well as why a lot of us Hogwarts Exiles aren't all that graceful about what you Americans have offered us. Harry saved a lot of our lives, probably all of them, and there's _still_ a warrant out for his arrest over that."

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Harry, his facial expression fading into utter neutrality, stared silently at the stone in Flamel's hand for a long minute, before looking back up to meet the older man's gaze.

"Dumbledore is dead then," He said flatly.

"Yes," Flamel said calmly, gazing intently into Harry's eyes,"Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is dead. He came to me some months after you killed most of Tom Riddle's surviving supporters, and, amongst other things, volunteered to be the critical component in the fabrication of a new Philosopher's Stone."

Hermione felt an urge to speak, to ask questions, but the attention between Flamel and Harry was so sharp that she could _feel_ it, and something in her did not dare interrupt the stare-down. Fortunately for her patience and relentlessly inquisitive nature, Harry asked at least one question for her.

"The fabrication of the Philosopher's Stone involves voluntary sacrifice of one's life as an integral component then?" Harry asked quietly.

"Yes," Flamel said directly, "It is the primary reason why no known man other than myself has ever successfully crafted one. Most of those obsessed with immortality are far too vile to even think of selfless sacrifice."

"Why."

Hermione had never in her life heard so much pent up emotional tension crammed into a single neutral word, which somehow managed to both be, and not be, a question.

"A number of reasons, Mister Potter," Flamel said crisply, "Foremost amongst them, a belief that he had become a failure in everything he attempted to stand for. The previous Stone, which I had entrusted to him, had been stolen, possibly destroyed, your life, which he had appointed himself personal guardian of, had become a living horror for most of your childhood years. Realizing that he had allowed Hogwarts, a school that he deeply cherished, to become a mockery of a worthwhile teaching institution that fostered arrogance and racism amongst a significant proportion of its students. Tom Riddle, who he also held a hand in shaping, not only returned, but fought a hideously bloody and vicious battle against you, one which killed dozens, permanently debilitated you, nearly killed Miss Granger, and perhaps also the fact that you did not need his help, _ask_ for his help, or the help of any other to win. In all, he felt the need to both redeem himself, and prevent himself from making any further mistakes, and to do so, he sacrificed his own life in order to return at least one precious thing that he had lost."

Flamel finally returned the Stone to an interior pocket of his jacket, but did not break his stare with Harry. Long, _long_ moments passed where none of the three within Flamel's barrier spoke, and the silent duel of wills continued.

It was Harry, ultimately, who spoke first.

"Coward," He spat harshly.

For the first time since Flamel had arrived, his composure cracked.

"_Coward?_" He harshly retorted, "You call Albus Dumbledore a _Coward?_ He was the greatest Wizard born of the Nineteenth century, and he ultimately gave his life trying to right his wrongs!"

"_Yes, _I say _Coward_," Harry snarled, vicious anger on his face, "I have spent my _entire life_ cleaning up his messes. _I_ had to deal with Vernon Dursley's petty tyranny. _I_ had to deal the Chamber of Secrets, _I _had to contend with the pathetic bullies that he allowed to populate his school, and _I_ had to draw McGonagall's attention to set it right," Harry's anger began to become a palpable thing, and Hermione could _feel_ it pressing up against her, "_I, _with help from Hermione, had to not only discover what became of Sirius Black, but break him out of _Bloody Azkaban, _because _he_, the supreme judicial and legislative authority of Britain, _couldn't be bothered_ to give the man a trial. _I_ faced Voldemort in the graveyard, _I_ chewed on the Cruciatus for minutes on end to save Hermione's life, _and I have spent the last year and a half fighting the war he should have prevented!_"

A bolt of half-formed magic erupted from Harry towards Flamel, who effortlessly batted it down into the downward, where it half-melted, half crushed the lab's tiled concrete floor.

"Dumbledore was the _only_ viable political opposition to Fudge," Harry snarled, eyes _glowing_ with anger, even as he visibly fought to bring his magic back under control, "If he hadn't chosen _suicide_ instead of _facing the problems he helped create_, this _entire damn war _ would _never have happened_. So _yes_, I name him a _coward_."

With that, Harry whipped his Invisibility Cloak out from within his pockets, and swept it around himself, disappearing once more.

"Potter," Flamel barked, "There is more to this you know, before you leave, remember this: There is more to the Stone, and its part in my centuries-long feud with Salazar, than you know. Salazar is tied to the magic you know and use in ways deeper than you comprehend!"

Harry did not respond, and Hermione gasped as his magical presence rapidly receded, letting up a pressure that rendered her scarcely capable of breathing. Silence passed again within the bubble of privacy, though there was a wholly different mood to it this time. Once Hermione had collected herself, she turned and saw a sad expression on the Alchemist's face, then forced herself to speak over the unintended intimidation she felt.

"I'm sorry you had to see that, Miss Granger," Flamel said quietly, "But for all of Albus' faults, he was one of very few close friends I've had over the years, and even if he began to lose his grip on things in his later years, young master Potter had to be confronted with what was, in part, the consequence of his actions."

"Do you blame him for Dumbledore's death?" Hermione asked hesitantly.

"No," Flamel said with a sigh, conjuring a chair with a wave of his hand, and sinking tiredly into it, "Albus' decision was his own in the end, and it does serve a greater cause, much as Lily Potter's did fifteen years ago," He turned to face Hermione properly, and his expression and demeanor shifted again, "There is, however, business that I must discuss with you as well."

"Um," Hermione said nervously, fidgeting slightly with her hair, "About the Stone Harry used to heal?"

"He didn't just use it to heal you," Flamel said gravely, "It has been known by the greater spell researchers for millenia now, that the life of a man is in his blood. There is a power in the sacrifice of one's life, and of one's blood, both symbolic and actual, that to this day, I do not fully understand. All I know for certain, is that it is only through such magics involving such sacrifices, that death can be defeated."

"That's," Hermione said after a long moment of furious thought, "That has some incredible implications."

"Indeed it does," Flamel said seriously, leaning forward in his seat, fixing his serious gaze upon Hermione's eyes, "It is only because of what happened in the graveyard, and what Lily has already learned and done herself, that I tell you these things so freely. When Harry shed his blood, moved with the intent to safeguard your life at the cost of his own to his very last breath, and you did the same, it evoked powerful and wondrous magic."

"Lily's new body," Hermione said quietly, nodding faintly as she did so, "I believe in a rational world, but I still can't help but think of that as a miracle."

"It _was_ a miracle Miss Granger," Flamel said with a bittersweet smile, "_Love_ is a miracle. You have seen, and _felt_, in part, the horrors that man is capable of inflicting upon man; I have watched as men and women of wicked hearts have destroyed each other time, after time, after time, over more than six centuries," The Alchemist leaned further forward his voice and gaze intensifying in a way that Hermione had only seen from Harry or Lily before, to the very point of overbalancing and falling out of his chair, "Believe me when I tell you, Love _is_ a miracle, and the only miracle by which there can be any good in this world."

Feeling somewhat faint from the repeated emotional roller-coaster, Hermione absently conjured a simple chair for herself, and collapsed into it. Flamel leaned back in his own chair, and allowed the much younger Witch some time to recover.

"Lily's new physical incarnation was not the only miracle that took place that night," Flamel eventually said, "Tell me, when Harry laid the first Stone I created to your chest, he touched it to your very heart, didn't he?"

Hermione started slightly at the Alchemist's words, then flinched at the memories they evoked.

"I-I-I'm not sure," Hermione said shakily, "I wasn't really in the best shape at the time. I think so?"

"I suspect he did," Flamel said gently, "But even if he did not, the essence of what his intuitive blood-magic achieved is the same. He joined the very essence of the Philosopher's Stone to your heart, to _your_ life. And it now _sustains _your heart, and your life. Tell me, have you ever been sick since that day?"

Hermione's inquisitive mind immediately cast down memory lane, and within seconds, arrived at a rather startling conclusion.

"No," She half-whispered, "I haven't. Not so much as a runny nose."

"Have you experienced any major injuries?" Flamel asked.

"Nothing worth than slipping on ice and falling on my bum," Hermione said, shaking her head.

"Did that, or anything else since then, bruise?" Flamel pressed.

"Not that I can remember," Hermione said faintly, her complexion rapidly whitening.

"More or less as I expected," Flamel said, nodding gravely, "I don't know if Harry ever figured it out, but the Elixir of Life, which could regenerate literally any physical wound, and many mental, was created by bathing the stone in blood under certain conditions, and then collecting what the blood turned into. Obviously, as I've had no opportunity for systemic study, I cannot definitively describe the effects it will have for you, but at a minimum, I suspect you will never age beyond your body's physical peak, that no disease will ever touch you, and that any wound you suffer will heal very rapidly. Beyond that, I cannot say."

"Oh my," Hermione said, voice fraught with worry, "What do you intend to do about it?"

"Do about it, Miss Granger?" Flamel asked with a raised eyebrow.

"D-don't you want it back?" Hermione stuttered out.

Flamel _laughed_.

"Miss Granger," He said, his body language and voice shifting into something downright _jovial_, "I may be a warrior by choice, and an Alchemist by happenstance, but though the history books rarely like to write about it, I am first and foremost a _Healer_, and as far as I am concerned, you are _one_ patient who I've been able to provide the treatment I would like to provide for them _all_."

Hermione couldn't help but smile at that.

((()))

AN: So yeah. I've gotten a review or few from as far back as Brutal Harry, with people going "Harry should experience consequences for taking the Stone!"

Well, he did. And so did other people; they just took some time to catch up with him; I've been planning this outcome for a _long_ time. This chapter finishes up most of the exposition, so the next chapter will begin the final arc-and-a-half or so of this story. If the (smart and insightful) readers don't have a fairly good idea of how the end will come, I'm doing it wrong. If they've figured out _all_ of the major elements of the end, I'm _also_ doing it wrong. We'll see what you've all picked up on in time...

Also, some of you probably noticed I skipped Lily's conversation with Seras. This is because the content of that conversation is basically going to be repeated in a latter conversation with a lot more, more plot-important, characters. So yeah, avoiding repetition. I hadn't actually intended for Seras and Lily's conversation to go there, but sometimes characters go places the author didn't predict...


	12. Chapter 11

Hero Harry, Chapter Eleven.

AN: So yeah, it's not as pervasive, but this chapter also has some 'deal with the fallout' stuff. I wasn't expecting it to go this far, but you know what? It's what happens to characters, and I try to write Truth In Fiction; death, war, rape, all do terrible things to people, and I'm not going to gloss over that like it isn't real. As a final note, if anybody from a Hindu, Buddhist, or Tao worldview would like to contribute to the ideological section that will be coming up in a chapter or two, now would be the time to PM me. I think I got one or two offers back when I first started this story, but lost them sometime during the course of my authoral doldrums in the Fall.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"So Harry," Hermione began as they cleared space for their most recent project, "I know you've studied at least an overview of what's involved in enchanting and spell-crafting, how much do you know?"

"B-both require an understanding of wh-what the spell is actually d-doing, b-before it can be crafted or enchanted," Harry said, "O-on at least s-some kind of conceptual l-level."

"Right," Hermione said with a nod, "That's the basic bit. Anything more?"

"N-not much," Harry said, shaking his head, "I've only ench-chanted a few things."

"Not surprising," Hermione said, "There's not a lot that can be done without extensive study, and considering how far natural sciences have developed in the last two hundred years, Purebloods have been steadily distancing themselves from the fields of spell research and enchanting, since muggles have developed a better and better understanding of what magic is mucking about compared to Wizards."

Harry said nothing in response; simply levitating the last piece of bedroom-furniture out of the lab they had reclaimed, before pulling a Gatling gun the size of a grown man's leg out of one of his weapon's pouches.

"Um," Hermione said, clearly confused, "That's a fair bit smaller than I'd expected."

Harry silently reversed the shrinking charm on the gun, and it expanded to more than nine feet long, and a foot and a half tall, its four thirty millimeter barrels gleaming under the lab's fluorescent lights.

"This," Harry said, his more carefully-controlled voice taking on an excited tone, "Is a GAU-13 Gatling rotary cannon. The US Air Force had them built in an attempt to make the GAU-8, the most powerful rotary gun in the world, useful on other aircraft. It's only got four barrels instead of seven, as well as a substantially lower rate of fire, and unsurprisingly, it weighs less. Even with all that, it was still too powerful to mount on aircraft that weren't built around it, like the A-10 Thunderbolt II is built around the GAU-8 Avenger, warping the mountings they put it on, and being terribly inaccurate. They were all decommissioned after the Gulf War, and back in 1995 the US Marine Corps started buying them off the air-force, to use as heavy ground or surface-support weapons. Somebody with sticky fingers 'lost' this one on the black market, and Dobby snapped it up for me, I paid more than two hundred thousand dollar's worth of gold for it."

"That," Hermione said after staring at the weapon for a long moment, "Is a really big gun."

"2,400 rounds per second," Harry said excitedly, "Muzzle velocity of 3,600 feet per second, which is only ten percent less than the GAU-8, so it should be able to penetrate about six centimeters of modern tank armor, I wasn't sure if the documents I found on the GAU-8 referred to high-quality steel or to modern composites, at _five hundred meters_."

Harry turned to face Hermione, his eyes blazing.

"When I fought 'Salazar,'" He said, dead serious, "He was beating me on endurance, I don't know if his shield was more efficient, he had more magical stamina than me, or if it was just how much more skilled he was at deflecting, where I had to mostly evade his spells. The energy output of this weapon, combined with its rate of fire, means that if I can get a bead on him for just a few seconds over the course of the fight, it should exhaust him."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"I can't really blame you," Tom said quietly, starring up at the stars over the quarry, "For being upset with my government over that. Of course, if you get a handful of us Yanks into an argument about politics, you'll know that all of us are pissed about _something_ the government is doing anyways. You'd fit right in."

Tom and Ginny were both laid out on the Quarry floor, staring up into the starry sky, appreciating it in a way that simply wasn't possible around major population centers. It was chilly, but they had magic, and neither of them particularly felt like returning to the bedlam of the camp just then.

"It seems really odd to me," Ginny said thoughtfully, "Being so cavalier about taking the piss out of the government, especially when you work for it. I suppose that's probably because of all the shite from Fudge in Britain."

"Aside from the Civil War and the Whiskey Rebellions," Tom said, a measure of pride in his voice, "All the big shifts in America have come without violence being the main force behind it. There've been riots here and there, but we've never had an out-and-out tyrant ruling our nation. Nobody's perfectly satisfied with how all the details play out, but America lives free."

"I don't know if Wizarding Britain _ever_ lived free," Ginny said bitterly, "I didn't really understand things well enough before I started school to know, and after school started, things were so crazy for so much of the time, and I was so caught up in either chasing Harry, or trying to learn enough magic to keep up, that I never really bothered with politics outside of the school."

Tom rolled onto his side, facing Ginny with a curious expression on his face.

"Did they even have a vote over there?" He asked.

"I've no idea," Ginny admitted bitterly, "You'd think they'd include things like 'how the government that makes the laws you have to live by is run' in as one of the _important_ bits of education."

"Yeah," Tom said disgruntledly, rolling back onto his back, "The high school I went to barely skirted over the Constitution, and we didn't even _touch_ on state law. I'm pretty sure it's the product of a dedicated policy of incompetence in curriculum-selection, but it's just as effective as if someone _was_ trying to make us ignorant on purpose anyways."

Ginny giggled, and Tom half-rolled to look at her again.

"What's so funny?" He asked, confused by her sudden mood swing.

"You were _just_ telling me that Americans get pissy with their own government," Ginny said with a broad smile, "And then you go and take the piss out of the government yourself."

"I'm American," Tom said a touch grouchily, "Complaining about the government is a genetic compulsion."

"Aren't most of you descended from immigrants?" Ginny said.

"Yes," Tom said with a determined nod, "And it's the mixing of all the different bloodlines that compels us to complain about everything that's not from a given bloodline, so we all complain about something."

"That doesn't make any sense," Ginny said, "If you've all got mixed blood, wouldn't it all come down from the same things anyways?"

"That's my story," Tom said, blatantly faking seriousness, "And I'm sticking to it."

"I suppose that would be why people like to say Americans don't have any culture," Ginny mused, mock-thoughtfully, "Because you've just stolen it all from everyone else."

"I'll have you know that America is _very_ cultured," Tom replied with mock-haughtiness, "We're one of the most cultured nations in the world."

"Oh?" Ginny said, sitting up and leaning towards Tom, mischevious grin on her face, "So what _is_ American culture then, that isn't just something your ancestors brought over from Europe with them?"

"Pioneers," Tom promptly replied, "Throwing Tea into harbors, Cowboys, and _always having the biggest guns_."

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

A set of brackets to mount the GAU-13 on, as well as absorb its recoil, had been conjured, and mounted against the new ballistics lab's Southern wall. Three sheets of metal, each six centimeters thick, had been conjured and placed in front of the northern wall, roughly a foot apart from each other, positioned directly in front of the heavy Gatling weapon. Once the entire testing setup was completed, Harry and Hermione both stepped outside the lab, Harry placed an overpowered Impervious charm on the door, and then remotely triggered the weapon's firing stud.

A tearing scream, like a dozen chainsaws operating at full throttle, tore through the improvised test chamber for half of a second, and even to Harry and Hermione outside of the lab's heavy door, it was startlingly loud.

Once the firing was complete, and steel fragments had stopped ricocheting around the lab, Harry removed the Impervious charm from the door, and they reentered to inspect the layered steel sheets. Massive holes had been torn through all three steel sheets, the first having been utterly compromised, most of its center completely torn out, the second had suffered a similar, but smaller compromising, while the third had only a handful of holes through it, depleted-uranium cored rounds lodged into its surface.

The concrete wall behind them also had a small hole through it.

"Well," Hermione said, as she stared out the hole, and into the small forest beyond, "I'm glad you had the foresight to insist we use a lab with an external-facing wall. This would've killed someone if it'd fired into an occupied lab."

Harry was too busy grinning like a lunatic to reply.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

George Granger, Minerva McGonagall, Paul Wright, Amelia Bones, and a number of parents (notably including the Grangers) all sat around a large (specially transfigured for the occasion) conference table inside a room magically sealed against eavesdropping.

"I'm certain you are all aware at this point," McGonagall began, "That a significant number of my students, your children," She nodded towards the parents present, "And those whom you bear at least an administrative responsibility for," She nodded towards Paul Wright, "Have taken up the way of the warrior, and have in essence become child-soldiers. Paul and I gathered you all here today so that we can share thoughts and try to decide if any form of collective reaction is appropriate."

"I want to know how on _earth_," Molly Weasley immediately demanded, her body-language screaming agitation, "They managed to get out to involve themselves in this whole mess in the first place."

"They've been taking weekend trips to hang out with Harry in Puerto Rico since the first month after we got here," George Granger said curiously, "What did you think they were doing there, tanning on the beaches?"

"I thought they were just socializing!" Molly said, "What are you saying they were up to?"

"Combat training," George said flatly, "About the only one who hasn't been heavily involved with that is Hermione, and that's because she made a deliberate decision to focus on the R&D end of things instead."

Molly's mouth fell open, shock clear on her face, the woman completely beyond forming a coherent response.

"Were any of the rest of you unaware of what was going on with your children?" Wright asked calmly, looking around the table as he did so.

The rest of the parents present shook their heads.

"We knew," Amelia said gruffly, "Didn't expect them to go out haring back to Britain without the rest of us, but we knew they were training."

"What's done, is done," Wright said, cutting off Molly before she could jump in again, "_I_ was not aware of the Floo connection to Puerto Rico or the visits there-to, though it is technically legal. These 'children' are more adult than child already, and in a year, two at the outside, they will all be of an age to make their own decisions," Wright leveled a demanding gaze on all of the parents at the table, "What is at hand now, is essentially how you will handle the final phase of your role as parents. Those of you with some familiarity with war, will already know that what they have done, their childhoods are functionally ending, even if their _legal_ childhoods have not yet done so. How you choose to handle the fallout from this will most likely decide how they deal with you as fellow adults for the foreseeable future, possibly the rest of your lives."

Silence passed over table for some time, some of the parents intimidated by Wright's gaze, others simply content to spend time in thought, or allow the silence to pass undisturbed

"Hermione's been functioning as an adult, at least in part," David Granger, Hermione's father, said quietly, "Since the day a Troll forced its way into the bathroom she was hiding in at Hogwarts, six years ago. She's completed her bachelor's degree, obtained her qualifications in the wizarding world, and fought to save both her own life, and the lives of others. We pretty much treat her as an adult already; she sleeps in our house, takes breakfast and sometimes dinner with us, but mostly she's already begun her career, and is moving on in the world. I know it's a bit different for us, since she wasn't part of the strike team, but speaking from personal experience, I'd recommend that all of you simply treat your children like younger adults, who could use advice from someone more experienced, but are beyond the point of trying to order around. Treating them like 'little children' will just earn you their resentment and enmity."

It was some minutes before anyone other than Molly Weasley had anything to say to that, but over the course of the next few hours of discussion, one by one, all of them chose what to do about their children's premature loss of innocence.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"So the most obvious thing we'll need to deal with," Hermione said as she and Harry disassembled the GAU-13 piece by piece, "Is recoil. We've nowhere near enough research into strength-augmenting magic, and potions for the effect aren't reliable enough, to deal with that amount of energy once combat has begun, so enchanting the weapon to absorb its own recoil will be the first priority."

Harry nodded as he provided the brute-force to Hermione's fine manipulation of the massive gun's components.

"I suppose you could use a charm to consciously negate the recoil, rather than magically augmenting your strength, but that would require constant focus, not an appropriate requirement for combat conditions."

"No," Harry said in quiet agreement.

"Right," Hermione said, "So we'll need to calculate the forces exerted by a shell when it's fired, pick out the components of the firing chamber, and enchant each one of them to absorb the appropriate proportional forces. How far have you gotten into maths?"

"Tr-trigonometry?" Harry said, confused by the abrupt shift in subject.

"Well," Hermione said, "We're going to need Padma, Uncle George, and maybe Lily's help on this then. Physics involves a _lot_ of maths."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

It was nearly a full day before Lily and Seras were able to lure Tabane and her sister out from under their blankets, primarily by means of the younger girl's stomach. Tabane had reached a point where her own hunger was, at best, something she was vaguely aware of in an exceedingly distant manner; when her sister's belly began audibly rumbling, and the younger girl stared at her with pleading eyes, Tabane was gradually worn down and broke.

It was fairly awkward when she slunk into the kitchen halfway between lunch and dinner time, her arms wrapped around her sister. Lily had the kitchen table covered with notes on her incomplete fractal rune arrays, and it took her a moment to notice that the Japanese girls had entered the room.

When she looked up and saw that Tabane's arms ended in a pair of stumps, sans hands, things got a lot _more_ awkward. She stared at the girl's maimed wrists for a long, long moment, her expression shifting between grief, outrage, sorrow, and frustration, before standing abruptly.

"You need to eat," She said decisively, "I don't have any real experience with cooking oriental dishes, and neither my son nor Seras informed of any particular tastes on your part regarding western dishes; what would you like?"

Lily moved towards the kitchen's small stove as she spoke, sweeping up the kettle as she moved, then stepped over to the sink and began to fill it.

"I _do_ have a decent variety of teas, and I know tea is a reasonably involved component of Japanese culture, do you have any particular preference as far as such things go?"

Tabane remained silent, watching the older red-head bustle about the kitchen warily. After she had finished filling the kettle, Lily placed it on the stove, lighting the burner beneath it with a snap of magic, before turning to face the Japanese girls with a slight frown.

"I'm not particularly skilled at it," Lily said, her voice holding mild distaste, "And I doubt you'd appreciate it considering your recent ordeal, but if you'd rather not speak, I _could_ try to read your mind regarding what you'd prefer to eat."

"No Legilimency," Tabane said flatly, glaring harshly at Lily "I've had enough of that from Fudge's butchers."

"Understandable," Lily said calmly, nodding at the young teenager, "Now that you're speaking, could you tell me what you'd like to eat?"

"...Anything with eggs," Tabane said eventually, hugging her sister to her chest a little more tightly.

"Omelets good for you two?" Lily asked, her expression softening into a gentle smile.

Tabane hesitated, but her sister nodded vigorously, and Lily's smile deepened.

"Have a seat while I cook," Lily said.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"What do you want to prioritize after recoil?" Hermione asked Harry absently as she ground her way through physics calculations via pencil, paper, and PC.

"B-barrel and firing chamber longevity," Harry said quietly as he visually inspected the GAU-13's four barrels, "E-even with barrel cycling, fatigue is a p-problem for Gatling weapons, a-and replacements would be hard to g-get."

"Heat and corrosion resistance?" Hermione asked.

Harry nodded, then grunted affirmative when he realized she hadn't seen the nod.

"That's something we've already got enchantments for," Hermione said distractedly, leaning back from her work for a moment to reach a hand into one of her pockets, withdrawing a folder that was _far_ larger than the pocket should have allowed, and waving it towards Harry.

Harry summoned the folder towards himself with a silent wave of his hand.

"That has diagrams for the rune-sets I thought we'd most likely need for enchanting in it," Hermione said, "You should find what you need somewhere in the first few."

"Th-thank you," Harry said quietly, before opening up the folder, and beginning to leaf through it.

It didn't take him long to find the appropriate rune scheme, though he was rather surprised by some of the other schemes that Hermione had decided to include, such as one designed to inhibit _nuclear fusion_. Why something so obscure would have been included in a set of possibly-useful wards for enchanting a conventional ballistic firearm, he had no idea. That oddity aside, the rune-scheme for heat and corrosion resistance wasn't too complex, and Harry had more than enough power to apply it.

Enchanting was, as Harry understood, and Hermione understood better, a magical discipline that required more comprehension of the world than simple point-and-flick wand casting did. Harry, being a young man of intensely utilitarian mindset, had only basic conceptual knowledge of most fields of science, enough to prevent himself from being hit by most ignorance-whammies, and to understand the laws of reality that he regularly violated with his magic. It wasn't anywhere near Hermione or his mother's depth of understanding of most fields, but it was enough for him to manage most basic enchantments with, and as with most matters involving magic, the more power you threw at it, the less other concerns such as 'knowing what you were doing' or 'a list of physical laws violated ten feet long' mattered.

Harry's strengths ran more towards the latter than the former.

His study of ballistics and firearms had netted him a more detailed understanding of the issue of barrel fatigue than most other subjects, especially regarding automatic weapons. Each round fired produced heat, pressure, and spread a number of chemicals down the gun barrel, which in some cases were corrosive. Gun barrels were, of course, designed to stand up to this punishment, but with high rates of fire, came mounting heat issues, which presented a small host of serious issues for firearm maintenance.

First, the rate of chemical reactions roughly doubled for every ten degrees Celsius the temperature of what was reacting increased by; this meant that as barrel and firing-chamber heat mounted, they would begin corroding/oxidizing exponentially faster; the higher the rate of fire of the weapon, the higher the corrosion rate. This was one of the primary reasons that Gatling weapons had been reintroduced in the 1970's by the US military; unlike early Gatling weapons of the 1800's, multiple-barrels were no longer an essential part of automatic-weapon design, but they _did_ offer a brute-force bypass to the issue of barrel fatigue for extreme rates of fire, via the simple expedient of spreading the strain over multiple barrels. 2,400 rounds per minute, or 40 rounds per second, still amounted to 10 rounds per second per barrel on a GAU-13, and Harry intended to fire a _great number_ of rounds during his next encounter with Salazar.

Harry's understanding of why barrel fatigue was more of a concern than stress on the firing chamber itself was fairly limited, but he suspected it had to do with each shell's casing absorbing most of the heat and blunting the concussive force of the round firing. He still intended to get Hermione to include thermal resistance with the recoil-absorption enchantments on its various components anyways.

The second problem presented regarding barrel fatigue, was that at higher temperatures, the structural properties of almost all materials degraded, and the high-quality steel of the GAU-13's barrels was no exception. In simple terms, when something got hot, it got soft, and was easy to warp with simple mechanical force, much like butter was easier to spread when room temperature than when just pulled out of a freezer. With the GAU-13's barrels, this presented an issue primarily because of the compressive force propelling the rounds themselves; as a shell's propellant explosively drove the round down the barrel, that same force possessed the potential to warp the barrel. At room temperature, the steel was easily strong enough to absorb such forces, but as the temperature steadily rose due to sustained firing, the steel weakened, until eventually such a result became a certainty.

This was an effect much more difficult to protect against, as thermal output would be constant whenever the weapon was firing, unlike the kinetic force that the recoil-absorbing enchantments Hermione was working on needed to absorb. Even if the rate of fire was higher than could be adequately perceived by human senses, there _was _still a gap between each shell's charge detonating, a gap that allowed the enchantments to 'drop' the strain of absorbing one detonation, before taking on the strain of the next shell. The friction of the shell;'s passage down the barrel, combined with the heat of the explosively-combusting gasses driving said shell down the barrel, however never truly 'stopped' heating the barrel, even if the rate of thermal output would drop substantially during the brief fraction of a second when there was no round in the barrel, the thermal transference would still be present, as the barrels of the gun would never reach the same temperature as the burning gases within them.

Not without completely failing, anyways.

The simplest solution to preventing barrel failure, was actually non-magical and entirely simple; only fire in bursts. This would allow gases to vent more completely, and the barrels to cool for a brief period, between burst of fire. Part of what ensured admirable barrel-endurance on the GAU-8, the weapon the GAU-13 was based upon, was that the GAU-8 was used exclusively by the A-10, an anti-armor close-air-support aircraft, and it could only fire brief bursts in strafing runs. Using the weapon in short bursts would do more to ensure its longevity than any form of magic, magic Harry or anyone he knew was capable of anyways, ever would.

Still, that by no means meant that magic was _useless_ to Harry's purposes; much of his battle-doctrine was oriented around mixing technological and magical abilities to maximum possible effect. In this case, he was not content with the single runic scheme for heat and corrosion resistance, but also searched through Hermione's folder for enchantment schemes to absorb heat, absorb concussive force, and reinforce structural properties.

First, the thermal absorption scheme would simply absorb heat directly, leaving the barrels at a temperature equal to the local air temperature, until it reached its energy-absorption capacity, that capacity's limit dependent upon how much energy Harry put into the enchantment scheme. Second, the heat _resistance_ and corrosion resistance scheme would both make it take _more_ heat to affect the gun barrels' physical properties to the same degree as a set of unenchanted barrels; the amount of resistance was also dependent upon how much power Harry could pump into the ward scheme. Third, the enchantment to absorb concussive force would diminish the amount of effective force exerted by a given impact, internal or external, on the gun barrels; twenty newtons of force would only have the effect of ten, or similar, the ratio again dependent upon how much power Harry poured into the enchantment. Fourth and finally, the enchantment to reinforce the barrels' structural properties would make it _take_ more force to damage the barrels, either from internal pressure due to shell firing, or external impact due to an attack upon the weapon, effectively raising the steel's shear, tensile, torsion, and compressive strength's.

The end result was that heat and impact force would affect it less, it would take more heat or impact force to damage it, and it would just outright ignore some of it altogether, _how_ _much_ exactly it could absorb, being dependent upon Harry's total available power.

And if there was _one_ thing Harry was not short on, it was power.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

Tabane's younger sister, to neither her nor Lily's surprise, very nearly ate herself sick, before passing out in Tabane's lap while the older girl ate at a more dignified pace, largely due to her shaky control of her silverware via wandless magic, and kept sharp eyes on Lily Potter. Lily accepted the scrutiny gracefully, slowly picking through her own modest omelet and dividing her attention between the rune scheme she'd been working on before Tabane arrived, and the Japanese girl, a deliberate attempt to not overwhelm the girl with unwanted attention.

Eventually, both Tabane and Lily finished eating, at which point the young Potter Matriarch, dismissed the dishes to the sink with a flick of her hand, and turned the full brunt of her attention onto Tabane.

"You," Lily said quietly, looking Tabane in the eye sadly, "Are a very impressive young woman. If Hermione had decided to develop a sisterly, rather than a romantic, affection towards my son, I would probably be thinking of trying to pair you up with him."

Tabane had _not_ been expecting Lily to say something like _that, _and her abruptly confused expression clearly displayed the fact.

"Heh," Lily said, a gentle, sad smile working across her face, "How old are you, Tabane?"

"Fourteen," Tabane answered reflexively.

"My son was fourteen months old when he had his first encounter with someone who wanted to kill him," Lily said, her tone shifting back towards the somber, "Tom Riddle, who you may have heard of under the name 'Voldemort,' found my family's concealed residence, murdered my husband, struck me with the killing curse, and then did the same to Harry."

Lily paused for a moment, reading Tabane's expression, a calm mask not-quite concealing confusion.

"Obviously, the two curses did not work as planned," Lily continued, "I doubt you, or anyone else for that matter, knew that the reason the Killing Curse is so decisive and implacable, is that it severs the soul from the body. Riddle's spell worked on me, tearing my soul from its home, which is an intensely painful experience; his curse on my son, however, struck _me_, rather than him, as the rites I had employed literally wrapped my soul around him," Lily leaned forward, closing the distance between herself and Tabane, her voice rising as she continued, "My soul had already been severed from my body, and the ward I formed around my son allowed me to lash out at his attacker, and I destroyed Riddle's body to _protect my son_."

Lily leaned back in her chair again, and raised her hands up close so that she could inspect her them, turning them over, flexing her fingers and bending her wrists for long moments before she looked back up at the young Japanese girl in front of her.

"For thirteen years," She said quietly, "I was a discorporated spirit, incapable of affecting the world in _any_ way, even as I was bound to my son's body. I watched for seven years, as my sister abused my son emotionally, and her husband abused Harry physically. There are scars all across my son's back to this day, and Vernon Dursley won't step outside of prison until he's more than sixty years old for what he did to my baby.

"I know what it's like to loose a part of yourself," Lily slowly, gently reached out to lay a hand on the stump of Tabane's right wrist, "And I know what it's like to see those you care about hurt, and be helpless to protect them. I know that your heart is broken right now, and I know that the world may seem endlessly bleak, and I know that some hurts that have been inflicted on you, some violations you have endured, can never be taken away, but-"

Lily held her other hand out in front of Tabane's face, close enough to be easily visible without invading the younger woman's personal space too far.

"-As my own body and heart testify, _healing can come_, and both your heart and your body can be restored."

Face twisting into an agonized rictus of hope, fear, and disbelief, Tabane began to cry. Her tears came as silent weeping at first, slow, gentle tears, but as Lily swiftly moved around the table, the abused girl's iron control continued to crack, and she slowly dissolved into deep, wracking sobs. Lily pulled Tabane into her lap, gently removed the girl's tightening grip from around her sister, and pulled Tabane into her lap, cradling the girl in a gentle, comforting embrace.

((()))

Draco Malfoy was well beyond the dictates of his parents; he strongly suspected that his father, as the man had been before Harry Potter changed the Malfoy family, would have insisted that Draco stop risking himself on the behalf of mudbloods and blood-traitors. He didn't know it, but what his father would actually have said to him if he knew what Draco was wrestling with, was to go with whatever made him feel he was both being more honest with himself, and in control of his own fate.

((()))

Luna Lovegood's father, Xenophilius 'Odd' Lovegood, was in Australia for the Fall, and had nothing to say regarding his daughter's participation, or lack thereof, in civil wars and other violent, militaristic activities.

((()))

Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones both benefited from the stern guidance of Amelia; while Hannah's parents were concerned about what their daughter had been getting into, they trusted the elder Bones' judgment regarding such things. Amelia herself had her own concerns, and part of her wanted to demand that the girls show her just what they were capable of, but she was still recovering from curses more than a year old. And another part of her remembered all too clearly the look in a young Harry Potter's eye three years before, when she had been Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, and decided that perhaps she didn't need a demonstration after all.

((()))

Daphne Greengrass's mother, having killed Daphne's father as a matter of self-defense, had absolutely no problem whatsoever with Daphne's continued association with Harry Potter and his allies, even if it sent her onto a battlefield again. As far as the Greengrass matriarch was concerned, if she hadn't killed her husband herself, he would have been first in line to make use of the rape rooms at Umbridge's camp, and killing such people was not merely a necessity, but downright _admirable_. That Daphne was more than capable of taking care of herself as a consequence of all the training was simply an entirely-appreciated bonus in the matter.

Not only did the woman encourage her to continue working with Harry, she asked Daphne to put in a word with Potter on her younger sister's behalf, in the hope that Astoria would be folded into the group as well once she took her OWLS.

((()))

Tracy Davis' parents were still in Great Britain, and as Pureblood Aristocrats, she was fairly certain they would have held mixed opinions of her activities of late. Harry Potter had been, until the battle at the camp, unquestionably the most powerful known Wizard in England, and maintaining her association with him was worth a great deal as far as people of such a mindset were concerned. That an apparently more-powerful Wizard had appeared would have been of concern, save that _Nicholas Flamel_ _himself_ arrived to drive off the other Wizard, and came to Sakakawea two days later to seek a personal meeting with Hermione (and probably Harry too).

Tracy was fairly certain that her parents would ultimately have approved of her continuing to associate with Harry Potter and his endeavors, especially given the Dragonhide, and clear concern he displayed for the well-being of his followers. She was equally certain they would _not_ have approved of her growing temptation to change her focus away from primarily being a combatant, and towards primarily being a healer; there was no great power or wealth to be accrued as a healer, even if in continuing to work with the less-healthy rescuee's from Fudge's camp brought Tracy more satisfaction and fulfillment than anything else she'd done in her entire life.

((()))

Dean Thomas' parents had been fully aware of what their son was involved with, and if anything, grew only more supportive of him and his involvement with Harry's company after Wright and McGonagall's meeting.

((()))

Blaise Zabini, like the other Slytherins amongst Harry's company, had no family in America with him; he determined for himself whether or not to remain amongst Potter's company, and as it was the reason he had left England in the first place, he felt no desire to turn his back on them after the Fudge administration's power had been broken.

He briefly considered returning to England to see who would step into the power vacuum, but the threat of Salazar's unknown location and formidable abilities ended that line of thought before it got much of anywhere at all.

((()))

The Patil twins had elected to move in with the Grangers as housing was re-shuffled to better accommodate the new refugees; the senior Grangers sat down with Padma, Parvati, and Hermione, and had a reasonable discussion about the risks and benefits of their involvement with Harry Potter. None of the girls decided to distance themselves from Harry, but the conversation _did_ segue into a discussion of intended career paths after both their schooling and the war in Britain had ended, and the Grangers recommended a number of respectable universities to Parvati.

When the discussion of where Padma would study came up, George burst into the conversation, and informed her that she would be studying under him at Oxford once it was safe for him to return to Britain. Competent graduate students didn't grow on trees, after all.

((()))

Katie Bell's parents had a rather forceful argument with their daughter about putting herself at unnecessary risks, the morality of shooting at people who had no chance to defend themselves, of the wisdom in 'chasing after a boy who was clearly interested in another woman,' and many other subjects that came up purely out of unthinking desire to force the other person to back down, whether they were rational or not. Unlike most of the rest of Harry's Company, however, Katie Bell was a legal adult in both Britain and the USA, and the choice was ultimately her own.

Her parents were _not_ pleased with her though.

((()))

"You're not going back there," Molly Weasley said flatly, glaring at her only daughter, who had just finished putting on her shoes in the entryway in preparation for leaving their small house.

"Where?" Ginny asked, immediately feeling both confused and confrontational, showing only the latter to her mother.

"To Britain until the war's over," Molly said hotly, "To Puerto Rico, to the Granger Lab. I have no end of gratitude for what young Harry Potter has done for us, but he has no business leading my children into war-zones, and he will _not_ be doing so any longer."

"_Lead_ us?" Ginny said, tilting her head to the side as her eyes widened in disbelief, "He made us train for a _year_, and might have pushed us for even longer if he hadn't found Fudge's camp, before he let us badger him into taking us with him! He was against the whole bloody thing from the start!"

"That may be what he said," Molly said with a scowl, "But the fact remains that he took my under-age daughter into combat, without so much as asking Arthur or I, and I simply cannot condone you carrying on with him until he's come to his senses."

"_Come to his senses?_" Ginny said, now ranging more into sheer, unadultered disbelief than defiance, "Harry's been the only sensible person in this whole ruddy war since the start! If it wasn't for him, we all would've died in Hogwarts!"

"Why Lily Potter allows him to engage in such foolishness," Molly said, shaking her head in a deprecating manner, "I've no idea, but just because she lets him run amuck-"

"I'm not listening to this anymore," Ginny said flatly, turning back towards the door, and pulling it open.

Any further motion on her part was interrupted by the sound of a wand being pulled from a set of robes behind her, and Ginny instinctively twisted in place, her wand coming up lightning fast, her eyes hard as she stared down it at her mother.

"I _said_," Ginny ground out, "I'm _leaving_."

"No, you are _not_," Molly shouted, "I am your mother, you are my child, and I say you're not going anywhere!"

"_Try_ to stop me," Ginny growled, a fierce light of desire burning in her eyes, "Just you _try_ it."

Molly's wand moved, the older redhead's mouth opening to begin a spell, but Ginny was far, _far_ faster. A silent disarming spell flashed across the distance between them in a heartbeat and a half, tearing Molly's wand violently from her grip, Ginny's hand already raised to intercept it.

"_Pathetic_," Ginny spat as her mother stared at her in shock, "You didn't listen to a _single_ thing I said, did you? I've been training with Harry-bloody-Potter for a _year_."

"Ginevra Molly Weas-" Molly began, but Ginny silenced her with a sharp gesture from her wand.

"Don't even try it, bitch," Ginny snarled, her voice hot with hatred and disgust, "You've no _clue_ what I've been through, what I'm capable of. You're a willfully ignorant, selfish, _stupid_ bitch, resting in peace because of what Harry, his friends, and _your own children_ have done to make things safe for people like you. I used to think you were an amazing mum, but then the _real world_ happened to me, and I realized that your stupidity has just been holding me back, and if I let it, I'd be just as helpless as you are."

Ginny hurled her mother's wand back at the older redhead, before whirling in place and storming out the door.

"_Goodbye, _mum," Ginny snarled, before slamming the door decisively behind her.

((()))

End Chapter Eleven.

((()))

AN: The number of fics out there that are irrationally harsh (bashing) to Molly Weasley made me leery of this last sequence, but in canon, Molly _is_ an over-protective mother, and frankly is holding her children down by keeping them oblivious to very real threats to them. After what happened to her brothers, her worry for her family is understandable, but how she handles it isn't healthy.

Due to time constraints imposed by a Con and other things, the last two parts of this story weren't Beta'd; sorry if some errors slipped through as a result.

Just two or three more chapters until this story comes to its close; something I'm looking forward to, as while I consider this project to be quite important, I'm eager to clear my writing plate a bit, and move on to larger, grander things.


	13. Chapter 12

Hero Harry Chapter Twelve

AN: Sorry about this update coming a week late; I was slower than I should have been in getting ahold of Mad Mad Reviewer, who wrote the Atheist for this chapter. As in he directly wrote the sections where the Atheist in this speaks. Props to him for speaking out for his worldview, and contributing to this fic by doing so.

Also, in case it was not clear, I don't think how Ginny treated her mother was wholly appropriate; I don't think she should have called her a bitch, but her general denial of what her mother was doing _was_ appropriate.

Endgame begins...

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

As days passed in the camp, the mood of its residents began to change. For those who'd come to the camp from Britain, this was almost inevitable; the most visible apparent reason for them to have fled had been removed, and the expectation of being able to return was rising. For those of other nationalities around the camp, a mixture of hope and resentment formed, that a stabilization of Britain's magical community would result somehow in the semi-shadow war between GDI and Nod in Europe ending. And of course, the massive influx of resently-freed captives also had a massive impact on the camp's mood, a mixture of broken-heartedness from some, and rampant rejoicing from others who focused more on their freedom, than what they had endured in captivity.

Hermione and the others, had never been terribly clear on why so many of the European magicals blamed Britain's civil war on the Brotherhood of Nod's attacks on the magical enclaves of Europe; their minds had been occupied with other things. Harry, who had not actually been informed of the resentment by the others until he began his invisible residence in the camp, spent roughly a single day investigating the affair. As best he could tell, there was no _legitimate_ reason for the resentment the other magicals had for the Brits, but unlike the rest of them, he knew that Nod was heavily involved in harvesting and refining Tiberium, and once he heard of its magical-absorptive properties from Hermione, he arrived at the theory that someone in the leadership of Nod was aware of the magical world, and had decided to conduct 'research.'

It wasn't a particularly well-substantiated theory, but Harry had more important things on his mind, and cared more about whether or not the irrational resentment amongst certain members of the camp presented a real threat, or would most likely simmer passively. It didn't take long for him to come to the conclusion that while those from the continent might have gotten it into their heads to do something violent en-mass in times past, only a sparse handful were stupid enough to start something now that they were massively outnumbered. And said handful presented no real threat to the community as a whole, between the more formidable combatants amongst the British contingent, McGonagall's organization of patrols, and Wright's personnel also keeping an eye out for trouble, they presented little threat even to individuals.

The entire attitude and mood shift throughout the camp came as no surprise to Harry; what _did_ come as a surprise, was when his mother decided to approach him about it all. What she _did_ about it, didn't actually surprise him much at all.

((()))

The camp now had five simple meeting halls, large timber constructions with bathrooms, power, lighting, collapsible tables and stackable chairs, and not much else. A sixth was under construction, and the ultimate intention was for eight total; Lily had reserved one of them for the evening, and gathered the strike team, and a number of their family members, together. Some of the rescuees from Fudge's camp and a few of Wright's camp staff had also shown up, whether out of curiosity or to keep an eye on things, Harry didn't know, but he kept a loose eye on them, as he hadn't had time to adequately gauge their trustworthiness, and stress level.

A modest bit of magic had arranged the hall's interior into a simple 'round table' arrangement, though it was more a circle of tables with a hollow center, which Lily parked herself in, and waited for everyone else to arrive, sitting themselves around the tables (a few standing) as they pleased.

"I've gathered you all here," Lily called over idle chatter once everyone had assembled, "To, in essence, continue based off of what I talked with you all about the day after you got back from the raid, about how to deal with all the death and killing that came from it."

Lily paused for a moment to make eye contact with each member of the strike team.

"I talked with you about how it's a tragedy when someone is so gone, that killing them is the only reasonable option," She continued, "However, that belief, is part of a logical construct, one that involves a conclusion based on two other critical premises; first, that human life has intrinsic worth, and second, that there is an objective moral right and wrong, including things like rape, enslaving, and senseless killing being wrong. I know that most young men and women of your age don't think about such things, but it's important to know what you stand on.

"People like Fudge, and the Pureblood Supremacists believe in a world where being born to purely magical parentage gives them an inherent value and 'quality,' one which those of mixed birth have less of, and those of non-magical birth, have _none_ of," Lily scowled fiercely for a moment before continuing, "Once they've established that value in their mind, then things like the law controlling people's marriage, attacking Hogwarts, imprisoning, enslaving, and raping, all aren't _wrong_ anymore. Why? Because to them, the people they did these things to _aren't people_, they're subhuman, and thus, have either no, or little rights."

Lily stopped again, sweeping her gaze over all of those present, gauging their mood and expression.

"Everyone has an instinctive understanding that such things are _wrong_, something that I call the conscience," Lily said, "But that can be conditioned or trained out of a person, and when people are after their own selfish interests, they can and will go to _great lengths_ to rationalize or justify what they are doing as right or wrong, and an instinctive understanding isn't good enough. It becomes pivotal then, absolutely _crucial_, to be able to answer the questions, 'How is human worth defined?' and 'What defines right and wrong?'"

Lily paused for a few moments to let people think; she could see that a few of the adults were beginning to hit a point where they wished to respond, and Hermione was only holding her silence because she, her parents, and Lily, had all discussed the subject before.

"I'm a Theist," Lily continued, her voice taking on stronger, more passionate tones, "I believe in a God who created man, specifically the God of the Christian Bible. I believe that man's, man as in the race, mankind, including women such as myself, inherent worth comes from being made in the Image of God, with an immortal soul, and the ability to create things ourselves. I'm sure it will come to no surprise, that this ideology also includes a very clear source of moral law, with God serving as the non-subjective absolute standard of right and wrong. This is the rational grounds upon which I draw mankind's worth and value, where do _you_ draw it from?"

A bespectacled man looked about the room realizing everybody else was still thinking about their own answers before speaking.

"I'm an Atheist," he started. "I don't believe in any sort of god, or greater power, or anything else. I don't believe that there's a higher power watching over us, or anything waiting for us when we die. We, that is mankind, are in this together. We've got only one shot at life, and we should make it the best we can for as many as we can. Sure, logic says that making it miserable for everybody else is a good recipe for making it miserable for me, but I think it's easier to just say 'Don't be a dick.'"

"I can get along with someone with an ethos like that," Lily said, turning to face the man, one of the State Department men working under Wright in running the camp, "The problem then, is if there's no external source defining value or morality, can you in any objective way, say that it's better, for example, for me to go through life without being raped, than getting raped at some point? Obviously, I'd rather not, obviously, even if one doesn't believe in an objective morality, I'll experience the physiological symptoms of pain and suffering, but in the end, can you say that there's more to the situation than my own subjective desire to not be forced into sex, and my attacker's subjective desire to have sex with me whether I want to or not?"

"Objectively? Sure," said the man. "Rape causes physical and psychological damage that can last through a person's entire life. The act itself is _meant _to cause harm. From the psychological view point, rape is an act of control and domination, a statement of 'you aren't worth as much as I am.' We're all human. We're all the same. I can ask myself 'Would I want to be raped? Would I want to be harmed?' No, I wouldn't. Maybe it's strange to find the value of human life by finding it in myself and applying it to others, maybe it isn't. It's not something I think about on a regular basis, I guess."

"As to the statement of whether or not someone's worth more... well, what makes them worth more? Sure, anyone could argue that someone is _subjectively_ more important than someone else, but that's subject to opinions. Objectively, everyone's value is the same. Which means that someone their jollies at the cost of someone else's health just doesn't make any logical sense."

"That's a fairly consistent logical structure," Lily replied with a smile, "In fact, it very much reflects Christian morality. The problem though, is that you have something in there that is an assertion, a premise, rather than a conclusion: 'Objectively, everyone's value is the same.' Why is everyone's value the same?"

"From a logical standpoint, human beings are human beings," He replied, "A better question, I think, would be how would a person's value be different? I know some people assign it based on whatever differences they can find. The British magical government assigned it based on ancestry, the American government used to base it on race and gender, but logically both of those come from the back end of a bull. Can we take value away from someone because they harm others for their own gain? Do we give value to people because they work for the common good? What values could be assigned? Do we go with some sort of mathematical formula? Or is it gut instinct? It's a question that humanity's been wrestling with since they invented wrestling as a sport, and probably even longer than that.

"I suppose there's some arguments that could be made about the physically and mentally handicapped," he began. By this point, he was staring at the ceiling, giving a more stream of consciousness thoughts than anything else. "Then again, _surprise_, they're people too. People in persistent vegetative states? We have tests that determine whether someone is still there, but none that test whether they _aren't_. I think we could dig around for a while into special cases and outliers, but it all comes down to whether or not they're a person. Then again, that's how most people's morality works. Whether or not someone or something else is considered a person. How bigots see others as subhuman. And I suppose an argument could be made against whether or not that counts against a person's value and... I think I could keep going on this."

"I _know_ we both could," Lily said with a gentle smile, "This is the crux of why I asked you all to come here today, and you've made my point for me excellently. The definition of human worth and value has to come from _something_, from _somewhere_, and I believe that is from _someone_, namely God, and demonstrated by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Just as my willingness, sixteen years ago, to lay down my own life for my son Harry showed how much I valued him, Christ's sacrifice of His life shows how much _God_ values us, and if that's the value _God_ puts on human life, who is a mere man to gainsay him?"

Lily took a moment again to sweep her gaze across those present, before finishing.

"I have told you now what I believe," Lily continued with a fire in her eyes and focused intent in her voice, "And not just something that, as you Americans sometimes put it, 'something that works for me,' I believe this is true for you, me, and everyone else, whether you choose to believe in it or not. This war is not yet over; there's at least one more party involved who will come into conflict with my son, myself, and others of those amongst us, and so I challenge you to decide what _you_ believe before that conflict comes. Because unlike Fudge and his cronies, this foe looks to be competent, powerful, and willing to kill without any hesitation whatsoever; you _will_ find yourself questioning things like 'why am I here?' in combat when faced with such a deadly foe, and whether or not you have the answer may decide whether you break, or persevere in combat. I won't try to force you to adhere to the same creed and ideology that I do, I know it's pointless, and I respect you all too much to just rant at you unrelentingly, but if what I have said makes sense to you, please come and speak with me about this all-"

Lily leveled a meaningful glance at the Athiest who had spoken up earlier.

"And I will try earnestly to persuade you of the rational truth that I have committed myself to."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May, 1997._

Harry's primary preparations were completed, as much as was reasonably possible. Nicholas Flamel had made a habit of loitering around the Refuge; he held a Canadian citizenship, and both Canada and the US shared an extremely open-border policy towards each other's citizens. Hermione had completed her extensive enchantments of Harry's GAU-13, and had helped Lily progress with her Fractal Enchanting system, something that they still struggled with. Lily had managed to get her arrays to retain power for a few hours, but she still hadn't managed to find an effective means of 'closing the loop,' to allow total, or near-total, power retention.

Harry now spent roughly half of his time pushing harsh levels of training on his 'harem' and the boys with them, and the other half enchanting bullets to disrupt magical fields. During each of these activities, he both made sure that Hermione was nearby, and that he was never visible in front of any but his proven allies. And Nicholas Flamel, though that had more to do with the man's ability to sense Harry's presence no matter what precautions the young Potter took, and no matter how hard he tried to avoid the man.

Nicholas Flamel made deliberate effort to teach every person who had been on the Strike Team, and a few others, a thing or two about magic, and philosophy while he was at it.

Ginevra Weasley moved in with Fred and George, and the three of them physically moved their residence to just outside of Grange Lab. Handling the plumbing and electrical connections was a little difficult, but even in the lower-magic environment of North America, it wasn't too difficult for the three of them to levitate the wooden structure itself. While none of them were as powerful as Harry or Flamel, all of them had become powerful magicians in their own right, and almost eight hours of training a day with Harry only intensified that.

The rest of the strike team spent time with their families, with each other, or alone, as suited their desires, and so time passed, waiting for word of what had become of magical England, waiting to see if 'Salazar' had the temerity to attempt a strike within the massive wards that guarded the North American continent.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May, 1997._

"Harry," Lily called into an apparently-empty tree, "We need to talk."

"Y-yes m-mother," Harry replied, and Lily could hear a hint of nervousness in his voice; it was likely he knew something of what she wished to speak to him about.

She had located him just far enough into the small forest surrounding Granger Lab to be out of sight even without his cloak, and she silently watched the place she could 'feel' her son's presence as he descended the tree, until he stood, probably leaning against the trunk though her sense of him wasn't that precise, and waited for her to speak.

"Why have you been avoiding Flamel?" Lily asked.

"You know," Harry said tensely.

"I probably do," Lily said gently, "But in case I'm wrong, or off about the details, it's best that you explain it yourself, so that we can both be certain that we're on the same page."

"He wants to guilt me over Dumbledore's death," Harry said tersely after a long moment of silence.

"Assuming your assessment of his motives is accurate," Lily replied reasonably, "Why is your response to this hiding from him, rather than confronting him directly?"

Long, _long_ silence passed after Lily's question, entire minutes of it as Harry failed to formulate a response to it.

"Harry," Lily eventually said, stepping forward to wrap her arms around his invisible form, "You hate Dumbledore, even now that he's dead, don't you?"

"_Yes_," Harry whispered fiercely.

Lily sighed sadly, and just held Harry more tightly for some time, gently trying to rub the tension out of his back.

"What he did," She eventually said, "Is inexcusable, but you need to let go of the hatred. It's only going to hurt you, and those you care about."

"It's not just _me_," Harry said fiercely, surprising his mother by wrapping his arms around her in turn, "It's _you_, it's _Hermione_, it's all of the muggle-borns, it's Tom Riddle, it's _everything_."

Harry paused for a moment, breath harsh from the pent up anger within him, and Lily wordlessly gestured for him to continue.

"He was exalted as this _amazing wizard_, ever since he defeated Grindlewald in the forties, and people have been treating him like he's been bloody well walking on water!" Harry snarled, trembling with rage in Lily's grip, "They put him in charge of their foremost school, they put him in charge of their combined Legislative and Judicial branches of government, they made him their emissary to the International Confederation of Wizards, where _they_ made him their leader, and he did _nothing_ with it all!"

The last few words came out as a near-shout, and Lily deftly palmed her wand, setting up a sound-ward around them, to keep Harry from attracting attention. Harry pulled back from his mother's grip, ripping the hood on his cloak back, to glare her in the eyes.

"Bigots and racists ran _rampant_ through English society, not once, but _twice_," Harry growled, "_After_ he came into power. _He_ was the one who brought Tom Riddle into the magical world, and _he_ was the one who both botched handling Tom's time at Hogwarts _just like he did with me_, and failed to see what Tom was becoming in time to stop him. His failings have _directly_ resulted in the deaths of _hundreds_, _including_ yours, and the fact that I've never been able to _MEET MY OWN FATHER!"_

The last came as an outright scream, and Lily closed her eyes, silent tears coming from her eyes as she forcefully yanked Harry forward, back into her embrace.

"He was in a position to do _everything_," Harry snarled, "Yet he did _nothing_. He allowed the government to be corrupted, failed to secure intervention from the ICW, and even in his _school_ petty tyrants and bullies ruled!"

Harry took deep, panting breaths, as he wound down from his rant, fury slowly cooling, at least in part, since it had been vented.

"The man has been utterly contemptible in every way," Harry said more quietly, but no less forcefully, "And it was only my own defiance of the path he set out for me, that kept _me_ from becoming another, _worse_, Tom Riddle."

For long minutes, Lily said nothing, simply holding her son, waiting for the deep, angry breaths to recede, then the tension in his muscles, until finally his temper receded enough that his magic faded as well, and the tremors that had wracked his body ever since the conflict in the Little Hangleton graveyard reasserted themselves.

"Harry," Lily said softly, "I know full well what that man did to you, to me, and to many others. I've very little doubt that in some ways, what he has done is not as bad as you think, and some of the things we either don't know about, or don't know everything about, were _worse_. It's not about him though, it's about _you._"

She pulled back to look him in the eyes.

"Albus Dumbledore has gone on to face God's Judgement," Lily said intently, "And God Himself will be his judge. Hoarding hatred for him in your heart though, will only twist you, and fertilize bitterness. Albus Dumbledore, despite the good deeds he did accomplish, _was_ a contemptible man for all his hubris and failings, and he was in many ways, both your enemy and mine. But you know what both I, and God, have to say about enemies."

"Love your e-enemies," Harry said bitterly, looking away, no longer able to meet his mother's gaze, "Do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good."

"Yes," Lily said gently, "Anger has its time, place, and utility, but holding a grudge against a man, especially a dead one, yields you nothing. If anything, Dumbledore deserves our _pity_, for the sad, _lonely_ state his life must have been in."

Lily look down at her son's face for some time, but he didn't turn to meet her gaze again, and eventually she sighed.

"I won't try to force you," Lily said gently, laying a hug upon her son before stepping back, "I of all people know how futile such a thing is. But please, let Love be the driving force, not hatred."

And with that, she turned and left, returning to her home, to others who needed her aid, and eventually to her bed and rest.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, April, 1997._

"This is a _fascinating_ material," Flamel said as he examined the suspended Tiberium sample, "I have never seen a substance that reacted to magic so in my _entire_, rather remarkably long, life."

"Can't say I'd seen anything like it before either," George Granger said, sliding over to where Flamel stood on his wheeled lab chair, "And frankly, it worries me."

"Its potential for unchecked growth and subsumation of Earth's ecosystem is more than a little worrying, yes," Flamel said seriously, turning to face the younger (if older by appearance) Physicist.

"That's dangerous enough in and of itself," George said, waving a hand dismissively, "But with high-powered sonics, we can check and defray its growth. What I'm _really_ worried about," His voice became very grave, "Is how complex the spell-latice defining the stuff is. It means that there's _something_ out there in space, that is _incredibly_ sophisticated, who sent this here on purpose."

"You are hypothesizing a malign intelligence from beyond the solar system?" Flamel asked.

"'Hypothesizing' nothing," George grunted, turning to look at the latest test-piece of Tiberium, "The statistical odds against something like this arriving on Earth by chance are beyond obscene. At best, whoever sent this didn't bother to check and see if Earth was inhabited, at worst, they sent this to either conquer the world for them, or prepare it for their forthcoming conquest."

((()))

Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May, 1997.

"I can't see you," Tabane called up into the tree, "But I'm pretty sure you're here. I want to talk to you, Harry Potter."

No answer came from the Oak tree that Tabane stood beneath.

"I may not have hands," Tabane said bitterly after a few minutes, "But I _will_ come up there looking for you."

"That won't be necessary," A quiet voice called from the branch directly above her, and the girl found herself being gently levitated up into the tree.

Tabane's first instinctive response to uninvited magic from a stranger manhandling her was to lash out, but she had no target to assail, and it took her only an instant of indecision to master herself. If nothing else, she had learned patience from her time in captivity.

"What is it you desire from me?" Harry asked her quietly.

"You're going to fight again," Tabane said, cutting directly to the heart of the matter, "Against those responsible for what happened to me and my sister. And I wish to fight as well."

"You have no hands," Harry said quietly, though his voice was gentler than most ever heard, "How can you fight?"

"I have at least a partial mastery of wandless, gestureless magic," Tabane said, staring at where she thought Harry's eyes were, "It is how I have been able to negate the obstruction my accent usually presents in communicating via English. I can also sense the presence of magic, which is how I found you."

Harry was silent for a few seconds, but Tabane waited, knowing that trying to push the older Wizard would gain her nothing.

"How old are you?" He asked.

"Fourteen," Tabane promptly replied.

"Your abilities are somewhat similar to my own when I was your age," Harry said quietly, before carefully pulling back the hood of his Invisibility Cloak enough to be seen, "I have come a very long way since then, but I must respect the dedication it takes to reach the place that you have."

He stared into Tabane's eyes, his gaze harsh, demanding; she met it unflinchingly.

"Tell me," He said, "Why do you want to fight?"

"I want revenge on the bastards," Tabane said harshly.

"Do you want revenge more than you want to live?" Harry asked just as harshly, leaning forward, his eyes boring into her own.

"_No_." Tabane said emphatically, "Dying would just be letting the bastards win, and I need to take care of my sister."

Harry continued to lock gazes with her for a long, long moment, before slowly nodding, and leaning back, concealing his face again.

"Out of respect for the depth of your drive," Harry said quietly, startling Tabane as he began to silently levitate her back down out of the tree, "If I can find a place in my plan of battle, I will fit you into it. Make sure you inform my mother of this; if she raises an objection, I must at least hear it."

Tabane struggled with herself for a moment after she was placed back on the ground, but eventually managed to speak.

"Thank you," She ground out, nodding up towards the tree, before turning and walking away.

((()))

Grace Valley Courthouse, Grace Valley, Virginia., May, 1997.

Grace Valley was, traditionally, one of the cultural centers of Magical America. When non-purebloods, as well as disenfranchised second and third sons, as well as a handful of classic 'young lady escaping a horrible arranged marriage,' as well as Squibs and others had been fleeing the Pureblood Supremacist movement of the day in England, many of them had settled in Grace Valley, and the first Western-style school had been established less than a hundred miles from the settlement. Now, it served as home to the Magical division of the United States of America's Federal Judicial branch, and it was to the highest-ranking court that handled purely magical affairs that Lily had been summoned before.

Unlike in most European nations, magical citizens of the USA were fully subject to non-magical law, and cases that didn't involve heavy use of magic in the perpetration of crime were handled in mundane courts. Due to the intensely powerful Ward schemes that covered the continental US, committing crime via means of magic was an intensely easy thing to track, and the use of magic in crime was thus relatively low. Some individuals, however, will still foolhardy enough, powerful enough, or both, to think they could get away with using magic as a means of perpetrating crimes against their non-magical brethren, not to mention crimes committed directly between magicals, and it was for these cases that a number of exclusively magical courts existed.

The highest-ranking magical court was legally forbidden from being called a 'Supreme Court,' a title reserved for the various State Supreme Courts, and the Federal Supreme Court, but after handling an initial case, then an appeal from Jordan Costello, the man filing the suit, a second appeal had brought the case before said court, which would be the final authority on Lily Potter's case.

Lily had not accepted legal representation before either the first court, the appellate court, and did not accept it for the third and final court; with magic and the money to purchase copies of all the laws and precedents set in the relevant subject, she could readily find all of the laws that she required. And as she didn't know any Magical American Lawyers, much less have an established trusting relationship with them, the fact that some of Harry's paranoia had rubbed off on her had most definitely influenced her decision in the matter.

Plus, she personally considered sitting at the defendant's table with a small wall of legal tomes beside her, rather than a lawyer, to present a pleasantly intimidating front; she'd certainly infuriated 'Costello's' (she was more or less certain that the actual party behind the case was a certain research company with too much money and not enough morals that wanted to get their hands on her body) prior two lawyers plenty with her ability to instantly reference any law they quoted, and explain just why their arguments were bogus.

Which their arguments had been; they had essentially been attempting to find a legal precedent for having her legally declared 'not a person,' and thus under no greater legal protection than an animal. As she listened to the third, and obviously most skilled, lawyer make his argument, she knew that this case would be different.

"In summation, as an entity created via synthetic process of magic," Victor Daniente, Costello's lawyer concluded, "The so-called 'Lily Potter' has not fulfilled the accepted legal definition of personhood, that being birth into this world via natural procedure or Cesarean Section."

Rather than attack her status as a human being, this lawyer was trying to establish that she'd never been a human being in the first place.

((()))

Camp Director's Office, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May, 1997.

The phone of Paul Wright's desk rang, and he reflexively answered it, setting aside his pen as he did so.

"Director's Office," He replied by rote, "Paul Wright speaking."

"Director Wright," A grim voice he did not recognize on the other end of the line replied, "This is Colonel Grant, and I have unfortunate news for you."

Sitting up straighter in his chair, Wright grabbed a pad of post-it notes, and prepared himself to make use of them.

"What's the word?" He asked, more attentive this time.

"Hostile Alpha and between one and two hundred hostile combatants have crossed beneath the Wards through an enchanted bypass tunnel at the Mexico-Arizona border," The Colonel replied, "MagInt says that with Flamel making regular appearances at your camp, he's almost certainly gunning for something at your camp."

"Excuse me," Wright said, "But who is Hostile Alpha?"

"You weren't briefed?" The Colonel said, a hint of disbelief in his voice, "The State Department is supposed to brief _everybody_ who comes into contact with Flamel about Hostile Alpha."

"No, I was not," Wright said with a touch of bitterness, "I am rather _unpopular_ with the Clinton Administration, and those running the State Department just now."

"Bastards," The Colonel growled, "Normally, we'd send a short Battalion to deal with Hostile Alpha, but something major is happening in Tokyo, and the situation there is completely FUBAR, drawing off the vast majority of the magicals we have in Uniform. As it is, I'll be sending a single Company to form a defense, I'll order their commander to brief you on the threat while you begin preparations to evacuate the camp."

"...How bad is this?" Wright asked after a moment's tense silence.

"Bad," The Colonel growled, "If I can't get you any reinforcements, I don't honestly expect any of you to get out of this alive."

"Shit."

((()))

Grace Valley Courthouse, Grace Valley, Virginia., May 5th, 1997.

"The problem with your argument," Lily said flatly, "Is that assumes personhood is granted by process of birth, or a substitution thereof. Tell me Mister Daniente, are you familiar with Soul Magic?"

"I can't say that I am," Daniente said, pointedly avoiding any mode of address that would infer Lily was human, as he had during the entire hearing, "I am an expert on Law, not esoteric fields of magic."

"Well, I will fill you in on the relevant aspect of the field then," Lily said, "It is possible to use magic to detect, and affect, the supernatural aspect of an individual. It is something that someone with even basic training in the field can detect in every human being, as well as other sentient magical creatures, such as Centaurs, Merfolk, or Veela. It is something unique to sentient beings, and it is via arcane and proprietary," Lily stressed the legal term, "Processes that my Soul was able to remain in this world when my body was destroyed. Further, while, for example, Merfolk possess a soul, they are not mammalian, and as such do not reproduce via giving birth, but rather laying, fertilizing, and hatching eggs."

Lily turned to look at the three judges that formed the panel for her hearing before continuing.

"If mister Daniente wishes for this court, in regards to affairs of magic, establish a legal precedent by which to judge whether or not a magical entity is entitled to personhood, then by the standard which he has just attempted to promulgate, Merfolk, for one, will have their legal rights as persons revoked," Lily turned to face Daniente again, "I would instead, invite the Court to bring in a minimum of three specialists trained in Soul Magic, to both substantiate my claims, and prove that there is, in fact, the Soul of a sentient being inhabiting this body that I wear."

"This panel finds Misses Potter's proposal to bear at least some merit," The lead Judge said after a moment's silence, "And will call a short recess while we confer amongst ourselves."

Daniente's expression shifted ever so slightly to display displeasure; in addressing Lily as 'Misses Potter,' the Judge had given a clear indication that he, at least, regarded her as a human (or human-equivalent) being, something that meant it would take both of the other Judges ruling in his favor to produce a favorable result for him.

Lily didn't try to resist a small smile of satisfaction. The man, and his two predecessors, had both been literally trying to categorize her as subhuman, something she had experienced more than enough of on the part of Blood Purists, and she held no sympathy for his disappointment.

Minutes passed in the courtroom, as the few dozen people in the audience chattered amongst themselves, Daniente spoke with Costello, whom Lily had identified as the customs agent who had instigated the whole fiasco with Harry when the Exiles had first come to America, and the Judges conversed privately in a room magically sealed against eavesdropping. Lily waited patiently for the Judges to return, alternating her time between leafing through one of her legal texts, and a few moments here and there in silent prayer.

The end of the waiting did not, however, come from the Judges returning from their discussion, but instead in perhaps the way least expected by any of those present in the courtroom.

Lily's body literally exploded, the entire mass of her flesh transmuting to blood as it violently dis-incorporated, drenching the entire courtroom in hot-blood. Shocked screams erupted from the audience's section, the Bailiff drew both his gun and his wand, Daniente and his client stared at the bloody seat of Lily in disbelief.

The translucent spectral form of Lily Potter paid little attention to the shock and terror around her, as she stared off to the Northwest.

"Someone just tried to kill my son," She said, fury rising in her voice, "Someone just tried to kill my son with the Killing Curse," She turned to glare at Costello and Daniente, "I don't have time for your nonsense anymore, my son needs me."

And with that, she swept out of the Courtroom, phasing directly through the Northwestern wall, propelled by nothing more than magic and the force of her will.

((()))

End Chapter 12.

((()))

AN: Some things, are really scatterbrained about this story, primarily because of the large gap where I was in the doldrums as a writer. I was just reading over some of the material in the first few chapters, and realized that I had Draco, quoting the same lesson he learned from Potter, as his father does during his confrontation with Fudge. And I didn't do that intentionally. It's still a really cool parallel between the two, in my opinion, especially given their split, but I had gotten so far out of touch with some of the things I'd included earlier on, that the later material is rather disconnected. Let this be a warning to other authors out there: If you're going to have a slow-down, keep notes!


	14. Chapter 13

Hero Harry Chapter 13

Extra AN: I think this is finally fixed. _Huge_ thanks to Aelket for cluing me onto HTML-editing the document to snipe tags; it wasn't as simple as Aelket thought it would be, but I still managed in about five minutes, rather than the hours it would have taken.

AN: As expected, there was a fair bit of feedback about religion showing up in this story in a meaningful way. There'll be a somewhat more detailed AN in response to some of people's words in reviews at the end of the chapter, which will take up a decent chunk, so don't be surprised when the tail bit of this update is non-story.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 4th, 1997._

Director Wright had called a meeting, sending out runners to summon the primary community leaders amongst each group within the camp; the summons were _not_ voluntary. It took just over three hours, even with the aid of magic, to gather everyone together, and to Wright's relief, Nicholas Flamel was in the camp, and came to the meeting as well. He wasn't sure to make of the man bringing George Granger with him, but he was hardly going to complain, as while the eccentric scientist wasn't a social leader in the camp's community, he certainly held a position of some prominence and respect.

During those three hours, roughly fifty soldiers arrived on the base via Portkey, each carrying over a hundred pounds of equipment with them; most of the men began setting up fortified positions around the camp, but Captain Gray Horse, their commanding officer, more or less attached himself to Wright, and attended the meeting with him. Paul was fairly certain that the sudden military presence had something to do with the prompt attendance the meaning benefited from.

"Alright then people," Wright called, bringing silence to the meeting hall they were in, "As you've probably all guessed from the men in uniform arriving on base, something Bad has happened. First and foremost, there's a party of hostiles moving towards the Camp from the Mexican border, having pierced the national wards by means I don't entirely understand, including over a hundred magical combatants, lead by someone that is referred to as 'Hostile Alpha.' I don't know who that is, but Captain Gray Horse here," Wright gestured to the Native American officer beside him, who nodded sharply to the small crowd, "Should be able to brief us all on that."

"Actually, Mister Wright," Gray Horse said, nodding towards where Flamel was seated in the small audience, "As the Philosopher is present, I believe he would be far better qualified than I to brief all of you, and add to my limited knowledge for that matter. If you would, Mister Flamel?"

"Of course," Flamel said graciously, standing and walking up to the front of the meeting hall, "Unpleasant business, but I'm more than happy to help the United States with this affair, much as you all have helped me."

Once he reached the front of the hall, Flamel withdrew his wand, and with a deft flick, conjured a larger-than-life image of the man he and Harry had faced at Fudge's camp in Wales.

"This," Flamel said seriously, turning to face the small assembly, "Is a man who calls himself Salazar Slytherin, and he had been around for at least a generation before I was born."

"_Salazar Slytherin?_" Minerva McGonagall breathed in shock, "One of the Founders is still alive?"

"No," Flamel replied promptly, shaking his head, "I am not certain of his actual identity; my best operating theory is that he's either the son or grandson of the Hogwarts Founder named Slytherin, but I really can't be certain. I _do_ know that he is a Parselmouth, cannot enter the grounds of Hogwarts, and does _not_ have access to the long-sealed Slytherin vault at Gringotts. It is because of his inability to pierce the wards of Hogwarts castle that I entrusted the safekeeping of my Stone to Albus Dumbledore seven years ago, something that Salazar has been attempting to steal from me, literally since the day after its creation."

"That would mean he has been been seeking it for over six hundred years, would it not?" The leader of the small French contingent in the camp said, "However have you kept it from him all this time?"

"I'm more interested in how he's been alive for so long," George Granger cut in, "From what I understand, the Philosopher's Stone you created is the only known means to grant the sort of continuous youth you have benefited from."

"It's the only _ethical_ way," Flamel said with considerable distaste, "I do not know all the details of the ritual, but during our long feud, I have more than once come across Salazar as he conducts a necromantic rite which transfers vitality from another Wizard or Witch to himself, a process fatal to the victim of the ritual. From what I have gathered, it is a ritual he needs to conduct once per year in order to stave off the affects of aging. Unlike the properties of the Stone I created, however, it has no rejuvenating or healing effects, at least none that I have been able to learn of over the centuries."

"I do not wish to be rude," Captain Gray Horse said before the Frenchman, who had just opened his mouth, could speak again, "But I believe it would be best if we discussed relevant threat assessment, motives, and possibly-viable countermeasures before going into other historical details?"

"Quite right young man, quite right," Flamel said, turning a gracious smile towards the captain, "You'll have to forgive me, one of the artifacts of my age and expected life-span, is that I very rarely feel the full effects of urgency unless lives are on the line directly in front of me," He turned to face the rest of the group again before continuing, "Salazar is willing to risk operating beneath the national wards for one reason, and one reason only. He has learned that the Stone I created was used to heal Miss Hermione Granger's mortal wounds two years ago when she and the Potters fought and defeated the group known as the 'Death Eaters,' and he's come to take the Stone, which he believes to be in her possession, from her."

"_Does_ she have the Stone?" Wright asked sharply.

By way of reply, Flamel reached into his waistcoat pocket, and withdrew a fist-sized blood-red stone, and offered Wright a rather amused smile.

"As Captain Gray Horse is no doubt aware, if he has had the short brief on myself and Salazar," Flamel said, "I am a professional medical specialist, dealing primarily with cases involving terminal disease, paralysis, and the like; although I am fully trained in both magical and mundane medicine, I mostly cheat to treat 'incurable' cases. I cheat using the Elixir of Life, which has near-unlimited restorative properties; the only thing I have not found it able to cure is death via gross decapitation or similarly massive bodily destruction, Death via the Killing Curse, and any case of clinical physical death more than an hour old."

"Why the hour restriction?" George Granger asked curiously.

"I have dabbled enough in Soul Magic to give you a partial answer," Flamel said with a shrug, "After an hour of physical death, the Soul departs from the body, though sometimes it will depart sooner. As to _why_ the Soul departs after an hour, I cannot say; perhaps it is simply how the Creator ordained it to be. More germane to the issue of the threat presented by Salazar and his followers, there are two salient aspects to the threat they represent.

"First, there is Salazar himself. He can, and if he deems it necessary, _will_, cast every single spell commonly or uncommonly known based upon the Latin-and-Wand system of magic. He is not only _overwhelmingly_ skilled in the use of such magic, he is also some how tied into the principles and system by which it functions. I have not been able to penetrate the security of his sanctum, and even if I did, I am not sure I would be able to find the relevant data; I know at least some part of how he is tied in, but the only immediately relevant consequence of whatever enchantments or rituals he used on himself, is that he has a functionally limitless magical stamina."

The Alchemist paused for a moment to let his words sink in, waving aside questioning looks and half-formed words before people could fully articulate them.

"That doesn't mean he is tireless," Flamel continued, "His body has _physical_ limits, and though magic can overcome that to some degree, the only means I know of to _truly_ refresh the body without limit, or paying a later price, is the Elixir of Life, another part of why he desires my Stone. For those of you who were not aware, he and Mister Potter engaged in a protracted duel during the strike on the camp in Wales, in which he pushed young Harry to the brink of exhaustion. Mister Potter's highly mobile combat style, however, forced him to considerable physical exertion, and thus when I arrived, he retreated, rather than face a likely losing engagement; considering that he had already successfully ripped the knowledge he sought from young Harry's mind, he had little reason to stay anyways."

Flamel paused for a moment, closing his eyes, and taking a deep breath, before continuing, his countenance considerably more grim.

"Make no mistake," He said, turning to Captain Gray Horse, "When Salazar arrives, I will be the one to engage him, mot likely with some support from Mister Potter. If you or your men find themselves in the line of fire, or under attack by him, your sole objective should be retreat and survival, using offensive means only so much as necessary to clear the way for your retreat. He utilizes a magical barrier that will literally block _any_ and _all_ magical effects, and any object approaching him at a sufficient speed to injure him.

"What you, and most likely Potter's coterie of combatants, will need to concern yourself primarily with, is the hundred and some men and women that Salazar has brought with him. Make no mistake, their sole purpose is to deal with other threats, so that he will be able to duel with either Potter or myself. Though the battle will, without question, be fiercest between Salazar, Potter, and myself, victory or defeat will most likely come to whichever side's 'lesser' combatants defeat the other, allowing someone to simply be buried in numbers.

"Further, while I have little doubt that if Salazar were truly determined, he could find a way to pierce the Apparition and Portkey Wards that cover North America, after a fight, he will lack the stamina to do so. In coming here, he is taking a risk of being trapped, overwhelmed, and eventually defeated due to simple exhaustion. Not a particularly _large_ risk, but that he would risk such a thing at all, rather than remaining in Europe, over which he has erected his own bounded fields giving _him_ the advantage, says a great deal of just how determined he is to recover Miss Granger, either because he believes she possesses the Stone, or that by studying the unusual means by which Mister Potter healed her with it, he will be able to create one of his own."

Flamel paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, again waving down questions, before finishing up.

"Finally, Salazar's subordinates," Flamel continued, "Are members of an organization called the Mage's Association. Most of the Association is concerned with researching and developing new forms of magic, most likely to feed both their, and Salazar's, hunger for power. A branch known as the Enforcers, however, is where the mainstay of his current expeditionary force is likely to come from. The Enforcers usually concern themselves with maintaining the secrecy of magic, and hunting down those creatures, such as feral vampires, which tend to make enough of a mess to endanger said secrecy. Most immediately relevant about them, however, is their style of magic, and thus combat.

"While Salazar and his subordinates are, in general, aware of the capabilities of modern technology, they rarely understand the specifics, and disdain use of it themselves, preferring magic. They also do not employ the Latin-and-Wand system of magic, I suspect because they are too paranoid to invest themselves in a system that Salazar himself has so much mastery of. Instead, they tend towards focusing on one or two branches of magic; you are likely to see them primarily use elemental magics, such as fire or lightning manipulation, manipulation of a particular concept, such as friction or inertia, or potent magical artifacts that have preset, but dangerous abilities.

"There are too many individual Enforcers, and they come and go with each generation, for me to have kept up intelligence on their individual styles of combat, but these are the things that, in general, you should expect."

He paused for a moment, and smiled wryly.

"_Now_," He said, glancing at Captain Gray Horse in particular, "I will answer any questions you may have."

((()))

___Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 4th, 1997._

_ "_Tabane," Harry called as he, still invisible, entered his mother's home, Hermione absently trailing behind him as she annotated something on a clipboard, "Are you here?"

"I am here," Tabane called from the kitchen, and Harry homed in on the young woman's voice.

"I'm found a place for you in my plan of battle," Harry said seriously as he entered the kitchen, "One that I think you will quite li-"

He cut off at what he found, and Hermione looked up when she heard the interruption. Tabane was seated at the kitchen table with her younger sister on her lap, slowly feeding both of them via levitation with wandless magic; what stood out most to Harry though, as well as Hermione once she looked, was how the four year old's face was covered with a silly grin as Tabane slowly levitated food into her waiting mouth.

"That's so cute," Hermione said, smiling softly as she watched the siblings together, "It makes me wish I had a little sister."

"Get your own," Tabane said reflexively and somewhat defensively, wrapping her handless arms tight around the younger girl.

Then she realized just what she said, and a somewhat awkward silence passed through the room while Tabane fought a perplexed expression off of her face.

"You said you had a part for me to play?" She eventually said, turning towards Harry, desperate to break the silence.

"Yes," Harry said with a tight grin, "How familiar are you with heavy weapons?"

((()))

Outside Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 5th, 1997.

When Salazar's attack finally came, it was as brutal as it was abrupt. As with most Wizards of intense power and skill, Harry and Flamel both were sufficiently sensitive to magic that it was nigh-impossible for another powerful magic-user to approach them stealthily; but Salazar had dealt with such issues before, and had more than one means of dampening his magical presence to near-nonexistance. In order to sneak up on Harry Potter, he employed three of them, two rituals and a potion, the only ones which were reasonably compatible with each other.

Casting the Killing Curse, even silently, wandlessly, and from invisibility, caused a flare of magic through Salazar's magic-damping effects, but as he had literally laid his hand against the neck of Harry Potter to do so, it was far too late for the young man to dodge.

The reaction was _not_ what Salazar had expected.

Corrosive, deadly magic exploded from Harry's skin, liquefying Salazar's fingers and half of his palm before his barrier was able to counter its effects, not to mention shattering both Salazar's invisibility spell, and his magic-dampening effects. Salazar leapt back, wand in his left hand already sealing the blood vessels in the ruined mess of his right, and conjuring a temporary replacement for the maimed limb.

Unlike Flamel, who in Salazar's experience would have delivered a wry one-liner of some variety or another before counter-attacking, Harry simply _acted, _turning in place and casting a massively powerful concussive spell, blasting Salazar off of his feet, though his barrier protected him, before whipping off his own Invisibility Cloak, and snapping open one of the Dragonhide pouches attached to his combat harness. A wand in either hand, he followed up his opener with a blitz of other spells, which Salazar deftly evaded, his active magic use focused on putting the finishing touches on the silvery digits he had conjured to replace those he had just lost.

He was somewhat surprised by how easy it was for him to evade the Potter boy's spells at such close range, at least until he had returned his attention fully to the fight, and discovered that Potter had, rather than throw offensive spells around, shaped the earth or conjured into existence a number of thick earthen walls, boxing Salazar's movement in, covering all avenues of movement except those directly towards the Potter scion. The self-declared Slytherin immediately moved to remove the obstacles; he did not expect them to present any real impediment to his combat ability, but intended to destroy them on the general principle of allowing none of his enemy's plans to go unthwarted.

The walls had been magically-reinforced however, and before he could get off the second set of spells necessary to remove them, fire vomited forth from the open pouch on Potter's chest, and a torrent of overwhelming kinetic force slammed into Salazar's shield, pinning him to the back of the enclosure with crushing force.

((()))

Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 5th, 1997.

The magically-capable branch of the US Military was small, by simple necessity. Something in the order of one in a thousand individuals in the USA were born magical, and military recruitment amongst the magical population held a roughly equivalent rate to that of the non-magical population. In theory, this meant that of the one million four hundred and thirty-eight thousand men and women in uniform, roughly one thousand four hundred would be magicals, and as with the conventional military, more than a third would be in the Army, of which most would serve in combat, rather than support roles.

In practice, the US military did not make a policy of being dependent upon a thousand and a half men to protect the entire nation from magical threats, and as such, two-thirds of magicals in uniform served primarily as Enchanters, laying subtle magical wards over major pieces of hardware, such as aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery pieces, ships, and more or less everything in Nuclear Silos, to protect against simple magical subversion of said material. On top of this, they enchanted key pieces of equipment of every officer ranked Major and above, as well as many lower-ranked officers as time could be found to cover, in order to protect them against having their senses clouded, or their minds outright controlled, by hostile magicals.

This left less than five hundred men and women trained to serve in front-line combat; less than ten to cover any given state, not to mention Washington DC, military bases, and ships not inside American territory. Manpower was _constantly_ in shorter supply than was considered desirable or acceptable, and the US Military payed magicals _very_ well as a result. With more than a hundred servicemen sent to deal with the catastrophe in Tokyo, fifty combat-trained magicals sent to the Sakakawea site was a _huge_ commitment upon the part of the Army, leaving the Continental US with essentially no strategic reserves of magic-capable of manpower should Salazar divert to a different target, or another threat appear. When the Company deployed around the Refuge, magically digging and fortifying foxholes by Fireteam, they knew that they had little chance of further support from superiors in any meaningful timeframe, knew that their primary foe was almost impossibly beyond their foe, and his minions outnumbered them at least two to one.

One thing that the US military had long since learned, however, was that if quantity is either unavailable, or unsuitable, that _quality_ must be emphasized as much as possible. The Enforcers and miscellaneous others that Salazar had brought with on his assault expected opposition largely along the lines of what they experienced in occasional skirmishes with British and European Witches and Wizards, in other words, foes largely along the lines of street cops or perhaps hardened detectives, _not_ a _military_ force, trained for _war._

Salazar cared little for the lives of his subordinates, but did desire for them to be effective in their purpose on the mission; IE wiping out Flamel and Potter's support, and then moving to help him defeat his two primary foes. As such, he had briefed them on the general skill and power level to expect of the group that had attacked Fudge's internment camp. They fully expected to face a dozen and a half well-equipped, well-trained, experienced oponents, with their own nearly two-hundred men and women. They did _not_ expect for the Americans to provide any sizeable amount of manpower to the Refuge's defense, and expected what little resistance they presented to be pathetically overmatched.

Their expectations were doomed to disappointment.

((()))

Outside Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 5th, 1997.

While the GAU-13's magical augmentation had been completed and tested in detail and at great length, Harry hadn't come up with his final idea regarding how to effectively use the device in combat until the day before, and as such, he hadn't had the time to properly test it. This lead to a critical failing in his plan that allowed Salazar to escape the first trap that Harry had laid for him, even if it was a very simple, and in retrospect obvious, failing.

The GAU-13 produced a _lot_ of muzzle flare, and with the shells emerging from less than two feet below the level of his eyes, he couldn't see a damn thing. His barrier's properties kept the heat and light from injuring or blinding him, but it still blocked his line of sight to his target. He wasn't the one aiming the Gatling weapon, making it a non-issue regarding accuracy, but it _did_ prevent him from being able to effectively reinforce the barriers keeping Salazar pinned in place, and less than a half-dozen seconds after the GAU-13 had opened fire, its target cut his way out of the killbox, and slipped out of the line of fire.

Fire ceased immediately, allowing Harry to see again, just in time to deflect the first spell of Salazar's counter-attack.

((()))

Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 5th, 1997.

Unlike their leader, the Enforcers, with very few exceptions, lacked the means to approach their opponents invisibly, especially magically-capable opponents with extensive training in both magical and mundane combat. The Director had left the execution of their part of the assault to their commander, a man named Jonas, who had decided the force would make their assault from the air. He had little desire to give competent opponents the advantage of forcing him to fight them on prepared ground, and even if their means of transportation up from the border were ultimately glorified magic carpets, they did still offer a mobility advantage in the air.

Or at least, they would have offered a mobility advantage if they had been fighting conventional wand-magic users.

The American soldiers, operating by fireteam against numerically superior foes, had entrenched themselves around the Camp, each Fireteam within sight and fire-support range of two other fireteams. Even with the ability of their positions to support each other, it left them with horrifically low force concentrations compared to the approaching swarm of Enforcers. The Americans, however, held one critical advantage over their foes; unlike the Enforcers, each of the American soldiers _was_ keyed into the massive ward array that covered North America, allowing them to Apparate and use Portkeys more or less at will.

When the massed group of Enforcers swept over the camp and launched a broad mixture of attack spells at the first, their targets simply disappeared from their foxhole before the assault reached them. The Enforcers responded by breaking up into groups of roughly two dozen, and raining fire down on every foxhole they could find.

The Americans responded by Apparating out of the camp altogether, which left the camp proper devoid of human habitation.

((()))

Outside Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 5th, 1997.

Salazar had controlled the fight since the moment he had escaped Harry's initial trap, and as he acclimated to his synthetic hand, his domination of the engagement only became more profound. Neither he nor Harry could make use of Apparition, and it had very quickly become obvious to both of them that this put Harry at far more of a disadvantage than it did Salazar. Spells flashed back and forth between the two, colored and color-less jets and blasts of light, waves of flame, ice, and electricity, all of them either deflected or absorbed, neither's defense showing any sign of yielding as the landscape around them was savaged.

Both understood the importance of mobility, but Salazar pressed for it far more than Harry; incredibly wary of the powerful weapon concealed within the pouches on his chest, having no intention whatsoever of allowing it to ravage his defenses a second time. Towards this end, he veritably danced, constantly circling Harry at near-melee range, close enough that the Potter scion had to constantly shift in place, never having a steady line of fire open to the elder Wizard.

The balance, what little there was of it, to the fight was finally tipped when the wing of Enforcers approached the fight through the air, and Salazar backed away, a viciously triumphant smile forming on his face as nearly two hundred of his minions approached them.

"I win, Potter," He said with a sneer, the first words either had spoken since the duel began.

Harry spoke no words in response, instead simply pulling, of all things, a wine bottle from one of the magically-expanded pouches on his combat harness, and throwing it to the ground beside him.

Nicholas Flamel appeared over the shattered remnants of the bottle, and instantly attacked Salazar.

TOW rockets erupted from the forest around them, crashing into the Enforcers above to lethal effect.

Salazar screamed in rage, and moved to assault Harry, but was instantly slammed to the earth by Flamel.

The primary doors to Granger Lab slammed open, spewing spells and bullets at targets of opportunity, while on the floor above them, a window exploded outward as a 'home' made magnetic acceleration cannon fired into the Enforcers.

Harry turned and ignored the situation in front of him, soaring into the air and bearing down on the nearest formation of Enforcers, fire already leaping from the Dragonhide pouch on his breast once more.

((()))

Expanded Space.

Tabane scowled grimly as she 'held' down the GAU-13's firing studs. The weapon rested on a large Tripod mount, which allowed her considerable freedom of movement with the weapon's barrels. As she shifted them, dragging her crosshairs over a team of Enforcers, who near-instantly disintegrated into a bloody mist as their insufficiently-durable bodies attempted to endure firepower that inches-thick steel could not, a modified Protean Charm linked the precisely-sized opening in the Dragonhide pouch on Harry's combat harness, directing the stream of 30mm shells as she desired. She was able to see clearly and select her targets via means of a pair of linked mirrors, one outside of the pouch, the other resting atop the massive weapon (Tabane required a stool to be able to position herself behind it properly), and displaying her field of fire.

Operating the weapon without hands was far from simple, but Tabane had found viable means of improvisation, having persuaded Hermione to link the triggering mechanism to a lump of rubber she bit down on when she wished to fire. To control the weapon's targeting, she had simply used sticking charms to attach the stumps of her wrists to the mounted weapon's double grip, and took advantage of how the weapon had been enchanted to be light enough for a single man to carry with reasonable endurance.

Hermione herself was seated behind Tabane in the expanded space; she had plenty of space, writing materials, and _books_ to work from, but her ability (or desire for that matter) to effectively focus on anything academic had been absent since the moment Harry had first been attacked. Hermione lacked, and _knew_ she lacked, the 'killer instinct' to be as effective manning the gun as Tabane had already proven herself to be, even without hands. It wasn't that she was incapable of fighting, it was simply that on the most fundamental level, Hermione _did not want_ to trapped in a position where she would need to either inflict or receive injury from another sapient being, and that blunted any application of her skills towards deadly combat.

So instead, she watched the 'targeting mirror' while Tabane controlled the gun, and tried to turn her sharp mind and broad knowledge base to finding something her friends could use to their advantage.

((()))

Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 5th, 1997.

Dragonhide armor, magically-enchanted skin, guns, grenades, flashbangs, wands, and a great deal of magic. Harry's friends and allies were loaded for bear, and they had been training to fight superior opponents for more than a year, one who favored both teleportation and aerial mobility; moving out into the clearing that Grange Lab had been built in, they found the skies to be what would most accurately be described as a 'target rich environment.'

The Enforcers were by no means easy targets, however; even as bullets, spells, and magically-guided grenades flashed into the air, defensive magics were raised, bolts of lightning, lances of fire, and bursts of conceptualized magic lashed back down at the dozen and a half Hogwarts Exiles facing them. Both sides instinctively knew to _never_ remain still when in the line of fire; the Exiles because of intensive training, the Enforcers because of both that and deadly experience in the field.

Neither force was capable of Apparition under the continental wards, and if it hadn't been for the barrage of rockets shattering half of the Enforcer's formations at the onset of the counter-attack, the Exiles would have been overwhelmed by sheer weight of fire. Without Apparition, dodging was effectively impossible if there was nowhere to dodge _to._ As it was, the terrain outside of Granger Lab rapidly became treacherous as it was pitted and ravaged by battle, and the mobility of those on the ground began to suffer.

A loss of mobility that may have made a critical difference in the course of battle, if it hadn't been for Harry Potter chewing a murderous hole through the Enforcer's ranks.

((()))

Sky above Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, North Dakota, May 5th, 1997.

Harry ripped through the night sky, functioning, in essence, as a high-maneuverability gunship, Tabane firing off lethal bursts from the GAU-13 attached to his Combat Harness. Magic Carpets, unlike Brooms, had allowed the Enforcers to rotate 'pilots' while they traveled, and had a reasonable enough amount of room to allow for proper sleep in the meantime. The larger magical device had allowed Salazar's force to arrive at Sakakawea well-rested, but they suffered for both lack of mobility and top speed, and offering clustered targets for Tabane to fire upon.

The GAU-13, like all aircraft-mounted Gatling cannon, had been designed to sustain an absurd rate of fire due to both the extremely short 'time on target' modern aircraft could manage at combat speeds, and the difficulties involved in targeting accurately in such a short attack window. Forty rounds of ammunition fired in a single second with modest scatter ensured that both a large number of rounds could be expected to strike an intended target, and that if the pilot's accuracy was slightly off, some of the scatter would strike anyways.

Being able to fire both at shorter ranges than any air-to-ground attack run could ever hope to allow for, and with concerns such as 'recoil' and 'barrel fatigue' completely removed, Tabane, serving as Harry's sword against the Enforcers, cut a bloody swath through the sky.

((()))

"**TO THE GROUND!**" Jonas shouted, magical amplification of his voice having proven necessary to allow his subordinates to hear him over the screaming wail of Potter's heavy weapon.

Jonas didn't know _exactly_ what the Potter scion was using, but he knew a muzzle-flare when he saw one, and had seen what the handful of rounds that had clipped the forest had done to the trees. He knew Potter's type, or at least was confident enough he did to know that getting in close to the boy's allies, where he couldn't risk his weapon for fear of striking them, was the surest way to nullify the heavy gun.

Jonas suited his actions to his words, and directed the Magic Carpet he was in control of down to the forest floor, sliding in amongst the trees towards one of the positions where he saw hostile spellfire emerging from. He, and the other two on his carpet, hit the ground running, abandoning the carpet as they lashed out with fire, venom curses, and Jonas himself with a simple blast of pure concussive force. One of the hostiles, a female judging by the outline of her armor, was knocked down by Jonas blast, but those his two companions had targeted shrugged the curses off like they hadn't even been there.

Then Jonas improvised plan was completely unhinged, as the Hogwarts Exiles unshrunk brooms, and launched into the air themselves.

((()))

The battle was _not_ going how Salazar had expected. He was quite well-aware that no plan survived contact with the enemy, but _this_ was getting to be ridiculous. Potter had retreated rather than relentlessly attacked until he was exhausted. Flamel, rather than fighting defensively to exhaust Salazar, hadn't let up on a no-holds-barred assault since the moment he first appeared on the battle, reminding Salazar of the _second_ reason he hated the youthful Alchemist so much.

Flamel's possession of the Philosopher's Stone being the first.

It didn't take Salazar long to come to a conclusion as to why Flamel's assault was so vicious; with two combatants powerful enough to, at least for a time, match him in one-on-one combat, he decided that they must be trying to aggressively tag-team him into exhaustion. Operating on this conclusion, Salazar fought defensively himself, seeking to hoard his own stamina, and wait for either Flamel or Potter to make a mistake he could capitalize on, or some clue as to the Granger girl's location to appear. Flamel being able to Apparate freely when Salazar could not made this considerably more difficult, but Salazar had long since become accustomed to the need to defend himself from any direction, at any time, with next to no warning, and he persevered.

It wasn't until he retreated through a squad of grounded Enforcers, which were torn to bloody paste by a fiery hail of death, Harry Potter's strafing run overhead clipping the self-proclaimed Slytherin with a hammer-blow of force as he swept by overhead, that Salazar thought to consider the lives of his men, and realized that he might be wrong about his foe's intentions.

((()))

For Captain Gray Horse, the conditions in the forest were near-ideal for his men to fight in. A Comanche by birth, the native American officer had known little to nothing of infantry combat in a forest before he joined the military, but after his first round of training in magical warfare, which took place in the Appalachian Mountains, he had found a fascination and talent for combat in such rough terrain. He held the conditions to only be 'near' ideal, because _ideally_ the forest they fought in would also be in a set of steep hills, or on a mountainside, but he had long since learned that in real life, and _especially_ in the military, you dealt with what you _got_, not what you _wanted_.

In the low light and close-quarters of the forest at night, his men's superior experience with fighting as a group, as well as their liberal use of firearms and grenades, lent them a stark advantage, one great enough to almost overcome the disparity of numbers.

_Almost_.

((()))

All across the improvised battlefield, save for two locations (around Flamel and Salazar, and wherever Potter was), the fighting devolved to what was in many ways the worst, and bloodiest kind: close combat. Enforcers closed with their enemies, some in the air, some on the ground, in order to nullify Harry's heavy weapon. American Soldiers closed with Enforcers to prevent their numerically-superior enemies from being able to pin them in place and then wipe them out with long-ranged spellfire.

Blood was spilled on both sides, some in the air, most of it on the ground, and a handful was sent from the ground into the air, mostly by American Grenades.

Not all of the Hogwarts Exiles had made it off of the ground.

((()))

Standing within a powerful ward based on the same concepts as a notice-me-not charm, Paul Wright and Minerva McGonagall watched from afar as the firefight played out in the small forest around Granger Lab. Few details could be made, the distance rendering things indistinct, but every time that the newest weapon in Harry Potter's arsenal opened fire, the bright muzzle flare and distant wailing scream of the weapon were clear.

"For all that I've heard of how powerful some of these Wizards are, how deadly they can be in combat" Wright said quietly, "This is the closest I've ever been to a pitched magical battle."

"Believe you me," McGonagall said, some tension in her voice, "We are best off out here. While I am loathe to allow my students to put themselves at risk, whereas I have spent most of my time here continuing to run a school, they have spent the vast majority of their time preparing for battle. I do not know the skill of your American soldiers, but I know my students are tragically deadly."

She grimaced, and Paul Wright, for the first time since he had met the woman, saw tears leaking from her eyes.

"They've had to be," McGonagall said softly.

((()))

Molly Weasley was not a woman prone to protracted introspection, but when she had realized that her daughter and two of her sons were not amongst those evacuated from the Sakakawea Refuge, she had found herself in a place she had never wanted to be in again.

Her family was in mortal danger, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Everything that she had done up to that point, that had _led_ to that point, was called in to question, and her usual justifications for how she wielded her authority over her children began to feel hollow; all that she had done had been to _avoid_ arriving at this kind of situation again. How had her actions to _prevent_ her children from coming to harm, instead ended up with them in harms way?

Molly didn't know, and no matter how she thought, fretted, or worried over the situation, she couldn't figure it out, so she decided to go in search of someone who might be able to tell her. Amongst all of her sons, only Ron had evacuated the camp, and when she spoke with him, his response was to ask why on _earth _she thought he would know what _any_ girl was thinking, especially his sister. When she asked him about the Twins, he said that it was most likely they wanted to pull one over on Slytherin himself, an answer she found to be altogether unhelpful.

None of her daughter's friends from Hogwarts had left Sakakawea, most likely all of them for the same reasons her daughter had (that _horribly_ misguided Potter boy), until eventually she ended up looking for that 'Tom' boy, the American that she had been spending time with lately.

But she couldn't find him either.

((()))

By the time Salazar managed to force Flamel's continual assault back, and take stock of the battlefield, he knew that if he didn't change the flow of the fight drastically and _promptly_, he would lose. With both Flamel and Potter present, until he exhausted one or the other, he had no real means by which to force _both_ of them away from his subordinates, which meant that if he wanted to keep himself from losing the battle due to number disparity, he would have to take _other_ measures.

Deploying one of his (extremely expensive, time-intensive, and rare) Simulacrums in a flash of light to distract Flamel for a few precious seconds, Salazar set out to hunt _other_ targets.

((()))

Harry was, by dint of long training and deliberate intent, a young man intensely aware of his surroundings as often (and _more_ often than) as was reasonably possible. With Tabane handling offensive measures for him, for the most part, this had allowed him to focus his attention almost entirely upon defense, and one of the first rules of defense, was that it was almost impossible to defend against what you weren't aware of. As a consequence of this defensive focus, Harry was aware that Salazar had disengaged from Flamel within seconds of the man doing so; it took another handful of seconds to realize just what the man was doing.

In those few seconds, seven American soldiers and Blaise Zabini died.

One point three seconds after Harry had realized what Salazar was doing, he slammed into the earth directly in front of Salazar, Gatling cannon blazing. Salazar, sensing the younger Wizard's approach, had attempted to prepare for a renewed assault from the heavy weapon, but the angled shield he raised only deflected a few dozen rounds, and less than a second of sustained fire tore down the shield. 30mm rounds crashed into Salazar's primary shield like a rhino at full charge striking a sapling, and the ancient Wizard was blasted back through the forest.

Harry only spared a single glance towards what Salazar had been doing, where he found Ginny Weasley had lost her right arm and leg shielding a fire team of Americans, Salazar's intensely powerful magic cutting even through the Dragonhide armor she wore, before rocketing after Salazar, flying low to the ground, his 'firing port' angled forward towards where Salazar had fallen.

((()))

It took Flamel just under a minute to dispose of Salazar's Simulacrum; he had fought the magical constructs before, and though Salazar always included new tricks pre-programmed into each one, they were ultimately no more than magical automatons, and utterly incapable of keeping up with a Wizard of Flamel's caliber. Once Salazar's proxy had been destroyed, Flamel took precisely eight point three seconds to size up the battlefield, primarily making use of his magical senses, before determining that the most likely path to saving as many lives as possible, lay in allowing Harry to continue dueling Salazar, while he took up the role Harry had rotated out of.

Flamel swept off into the forest, where the Enforcers fought tooth and nail with the Hogwarts Exiles and the Americans.

((()))

Improvised tactics had swiftly formed on both sides, the Enforcers grouping mages with particularly effective magical techniques together, while the Hogwarts Exiles broke up, two or three linking up with each American fire team, the combination of Lily's fractal Runes and Dragonhide armor allowing them to 'tank' hostile fire for the team. Neither arrangements were perfect, but then few tactics or operations in war were conducted perfectly, and they only needed to be good enough to _win_ with.

In the end, while both sides took casualties, three factors became decisive in the battle's outcome. First, the Enforcers, while initially numerically superior, the initial ambush outside of Granger Lab had both disrupted their formations, and blunted their numerical advantages; George Granger continuing to take potshots at any airborne Enforcers with his lightning cannon, while Marie shielded for him, lent them no further help. Second, the Enforcers were forced to fight a 'Ringer' for essentially the entire battle, either Harry Potter, or the Philosopher, the Clock Tower's greatest enemy himself, and they very quickly discovered that they had neither the firepower to bring the Ringers down, nor the skill to withstand their assaults for more than a handful of seconds, if that.

The final deciding factor, was that the Sakakawea Refuge's defenders were just that, _defenders_. They were protecting their homes, literally for the Hogwarts Exiles, or in a greater, metaphorical sense for the American soldiers. For the Enforcers, the assault was essentially nothing more than a power grab, backed and motivated by nothing more than The Director's personal ambition and power, and when it became clear that Salazar's power wasn't enough to decisively turn the course of the battle, the Enforcers took the only rational course of action available to them.

They fled.

((()))

Harry had not been particularly close to Blaise Zabini, nor had he been under any particular delusion that he was. He _had_, however, considered the member of Slytherin's house to be a friend, and more, Harry had felt _responsible_ for the other young man. Against an opponent of Salazar's skill, power, experience, and thoroughly demonstrated ruthlessness, Harry only knew of one effective tactic to prevent the man from cutting down any more of his friends.

All-out, unrelenting attack.

When Harry crashed into Salazar for the second time after they had re-engaged, he made certain to maintain a line of fire for Tabane while he closed, but this time, he did not stop once he entered effective range, but streaked directly in towards the ancient Wizard. Salazar attempted to turn aside the GAU-13's fire via a specialized shield, angled to deflect, rather than absorb, the torrent of 30 mm shells, this time pouring far more power into the shield. It worked much better the second time around, right until Harry smashed through the barrier himself, slamming the point of his broomstick directly into the man's gut.

Or the barrier over his gut, anyways; Salazar's magical shield remained every bit as unbroken before, even if the kinetic transfer from Harry's strike folded the man over. Harry reached forward to lay his hand directly on Salazar's head, intending to cast an incinerating spell while in direct contact with the man's skin, but Tabane beat him to the punch, and another volley of fire kicked the man off of the broomstick with bone-crushing force.

Unfortunately for Harry, Tabane had forgotten that the GAU-13 fired High Explosive shells, and when rounds began detonating against Salazar's shield, less than a foot away from Harry's face, Salazar wasn't the only one to catch a face full of shrapnel; Harry's body was slashed with shrapnel, but more importantly, so was his broom. Harry's own barrier, instinctive magic almost a decade old infused into his very flesh, absorbed the kinetic energy behind the shrapnel fragments with no issue; the enchanted wood of Harry's broom, while tougher than even the sturdiest of natural brooms, was nowhere near strong enough to survive the anti-armor weapon's blasts, and was torn to shreds beneath the hail of fire.

Salazar and Harry both went tumbling across the forest floor, skipping off the surface of a blood-stained clearing, before first Salazar, then Harry, slammed into the concrete walls of Granger Lab. Both were slightly dazed, though their magic had protected them from any seriously debilitating effects of their ugly crash, and both had already begun to lash out at the other before they'd even regained their feet.

Salazar, having literally spent more time on battlefields than most men lived, instinctively closed with Harry, a vicious chain of spells issuing from both his wands as he lunged towards the boy. Harry drew a short sword in his left hand as he brought up his primary wand with his right, deflecting some of Salazar's spells, and soaking the rest onto his barrier, before the two engaged in a brutal melee. Salazar didn't bother drawing swords, a pair simply appearing in his hands to replace his wands, as the man moved into a smooth offensive befitting a blademaster, which the man was.

Harry countered the assault via the simple action of ignoring it, every form of swordplay in Europe was oriented around both protecting oneself from an opponent's blows, and penetrating the other's defenses. Harry didn't bother with defense, simply stabbing directly between his opponent's blades to lay a blow against Salazar's barrier in return for the pair slammed in against his own. Salazar retaliated by infusing some of his power into the blade in his right hand, already a magical artifact, and sundering Harry's shortsword an inch and a half above the hilt.

Immediately concluding that a swordfight against Salazar was a _losing_ fight, Harry infused a kinetic-impact spell into his fist, and slammed it directly into Salazar. Salazar blocked the blow with his left blade, but that accomplished little besides slamming the blade into his barrier, before Harry's fist followed it in, and blasted him ten yards backwards off his feet.

At that point, their melee had happened to result in Salazar's back facing directly towards the primary entrance to the Granger Labs, and the man smashed directly through them, Harry leaping in after him.

((()))

Flamel was not a vindictive man by nature, and he knew what the denizens of the Clock Tower often did to those they decided were more convenient dead, or as involuntary test subjects. He also knew that the Enforcers in particular engaged in little research, and were one of only a half-dozen organizations in Europe capable of effectively fighting Vampires and other magical entities that preyed upon humans, and didn't know _personally_ which Enforcers had committed what crimes. As such, he allowed, and more or less ordered Captain Gray Horse to allow, the Enforcers to retreat, rather than try to cut down the survivors as they fled.

Flamel _did_ make an exception for their commanding officer though, putting a hole through the man's head personally. The Philosopher didn't know the man's personal record, but he _did_ know that there was essentially no way the man had risen as high as he had without committing any number of grievous crimes, and leading an assault on a sovereign nation with the intent to kidnap and dissect a teenager, was enough grounds for execution in his mind anyways.

When the battlefield had finally gone silent, and the dead and wounded were quickly tallied, the Americans had twenty-one men still combat-capable, six wounded, and twenty-three dead; the Hogwarts Exiles who had taken part in the fight had suffered only one fatality, Blaise Zabini, but Ginevra Weasley had been partially dismembered, Neville Longbottom had two broken legs, Padma Patil's face had literally been burned off, and Draco Malfoy's hair and eyebrows had disappeared at some point.

The dozen and a half young Dragonhide-clad warriors had taken _literally_ dozens of spells each that _should_ have been lethal, but between the incredibly expensive armor provided by Harry Potter, and the advanced enchantment scheme provided by Lily, they had gotten off _very_ lightly as far as fatalities and injuries went. Flamel wasn't certain how many Enforcers had survived to flee, but he had seen at least two dozen Magic Carpets flying away into the night, and knew that they had arrived three to a carpet, so estimated their remaining numbers at anywhere from fifty to a hundred.

So it was that with a handful of men treating the wounded and keeping watch in case the Enforcers had a change of heart, nearly three dozen surviving combatants moved rapidly on Granger Lab, where the fight between Salazar and Harry continued.

((()))

The first floor of Granger Lab had been more or less trashed within two and a half minutes of fighting, heavy spellfire and repeated bursts from the GAU pulverizing even concrete walls to rubble. Salazar initially took advantage of the close quarters to constantly force Harry into melee combat, where his superior swordsmanship theoretically gave him an advantage, but it didn't work anywhere near as well as he'd intended it to. Between the steady destruction of the building's interior rendering the quarters less and less close, the footing becoming progressively more and more treacherous, degrading Salazar's swordplay, Tabane becoming more and more willing to open fire even when Salazar was mere inches from Harry as well as fire early just in _case_ the Wizard swept across her field of fire, and Harry's continuing lack of regard for any defensive measures on his part, instead taking blow after blow simply for the chance to land another spell or magically-infused fist on his elder opponent, Salazar's 'plan' had eventually reached the point where it wasn't working at _all._

So he retreated to the second floor, and attempted to play the same maneuver again; he had always known that with the properties he had observed from Harry's passive defensive barrier, he would simply have to wear the boy into magical exhaustion, and while the boy's assault was fatiguing Salazar _physically_, it was doing much the same to Harry _magically_. He had sensed his followers retreating, and while a slow anger at their abandonment of him simmered in his gut, he simply changed his plan from clearing the field and taking his prize at his leisure, to wearing Harry to exhaustion, then either killing him on the spot, or taking the boy with him when he fled, whichever seemed a more viable option at the time.

He'd prefer to take the boy alive for study and to extract information from his memories, but he'd settle for only having to face Flamel again the next time he went after the Stone; two opponents capable of fighting on his level was simply one too many for him to be able to effectively handle. By the time Flamel rejoined the fight, the second floor of Granger Lab was mostly trashed, along with George Granger's lightning canon (which Marie had forced him to abandon when she dragged him away from the fight), and Salazar was forced to resort to measures he had hoped to save to cover his retreat.

On the plus side, at least from Salazar's perspective as he deployed the dozen remaining Simulacrum he had prepared, he could easily sense the Potter boy's magical stamina steadily fading, and he knew that the boy was already halfway-spent.

Harry reacted to a dozen magical copies of Salazar forming by twisting his torso through a ninety-degree arc, from facing left of the leader of the Magus Order, to facing to his right, while keeping his eyes locked on the original. Tabane was more than happy to sweep fire across the counterfeit 'humans,' and three of the Simulacrum were cut down as they failed to shield adequately against heavy weapon's fire. The Simulacrum counter-attacked, Flamel deployed two Simulacra of his own, and Harry ignored them all to lunge at the original Salazar, determined not to let the man escape his sight and begin cutting down less-capable combatants again.

Salazar was more than happy to accept Harry's charge, bracing against the ground and stopping Harry dead with the point of his sword, which again failed to pierce Harry's barrier, but did an excellent job keeping the boy's attention firmly fixed on him as he directed half his clones to rush Flamel, while the rest leapt out of windows and holes into the wall to keep the combatants who had remained outside busy. With Flamel outnumbered four to three, and five Simulacra providing _heavy_ distraction to those outside, Salazar retreated up onto the Lab's third and highest floor, seeking the closest thing to privacy that could be found on such a battlefield.

((()))

Tom was not a man (however much his father might insist he was still a boy) to sit idly by while others fought to protect his life, putting their own at risk. His 'duels' with Ginny, however, had taught him a _visceral_ lesson about how outclassed he was in magical combat, and he had been able to keep himself from foolishly rushing off into a battlefield where he'd only function as a liability to those he wanted to help.

So instead, he had secreted himself at the old Quarry with as much medical equipment and supplied, both magical and non, as he could carry and listened to the battle from afar, waiting for it to die down before he moved. As an American citizen of-age, he had both had and taken the opportunity to acquire an Apparition license, and was thus able to Apparate directly to the edge of the forest around Granger Lab once the battle died down. From there, he'd simply moved towards the only remaining source of light in the forest, ignoring the voice inside of him that whispered that the _bad guys_ might have won, and he was walking to his death.

The force broke apart before he reached it, the larger portion of it moving towards the only (muffled) remaining sounds of battle. The part of the force that didn't move was the nearer part, even if it was smaller, so he moved towards them first, and when he did, he was glad he had, because it was apparently the wounded had been left for care. A terse exchange of words and a few spells had been necessary to prove that he was who he looked like, and not an infiltrator coming to wreak havoc after the mainstay of the battle was done, but once that was done, they were more than happy to see him, and more importantly, his supplies.

Tom was less thrilled when he found Ginny, who was laid out on the ground, face screwed up in pain, one shoulder and one thigh extending into bloody tourniquets, rather than the graceful limbs that the young American was used to seeing on her.

"Oh god," He breathed, dropping to his knees beside her, horror and worry writ large on his face, "What happened to you?"

Ginny, her attention drawn from her own struggle with her pain, looked up and saw the bare emotion on Tom's face, and something in her heart shifted decisively.

"Come here you idiot," She growled, reaching up to grab his collar with her remaining hand, and dragging him down into the most passionate kiss Tom had ever experienced in his life.

((()))

"_WHY WON'T YOU DIE?"_ Harry screamed at Salazar, panting heavily as he glared at the elder Wizard he was physically grappling with.

Harry was tired, _very_ tired, but he had quite a bit of fight left in him, but that wasn't what had frustrated him enough to finally lash out verbally at his opponent.

Tabane, after expending tens of thousands of rounds throughout the course of the battle, had run out of ammo.

"You're impressive for your age," Salazar said condescendingly, a faint victorious smirk on his lips, "But mages far more powerful and skilled than you have tried to kill me over the years and none have succeeded."

Harry snarled, and tried to wrestle his grip on Salazar's wrists around to bring the man's sword up against his own throat, but the older Wizard was larger, and more skilled, even if he lacked Harry's penchant for augmenting his strength with magic.

"I have worked more," Salazar continued calmly as they continued to wrestle, thrashing through the shattered halls of the third floor, "Studied more," He kneed Harry in the gut, but the Potter Scion just ignored the blow, "_Fought_ more," Salazar arched his spine, trying to hurl Harry off of him, but the young Wizard refused to release his grip, instead dragging Salazar through the doorway he'd been shoved into with him, "And _sacrificed_ more for magic than you possibly could have in your short life."

Harry growled, and bit down on Salazar's knucles, drawing blood as he found a way to work around the man's magical defenses for the first time in either of their fights.

"Filthy savage!" Salazar snarled, and unleashed a wave of magic that tore the Potter scion away from him, Harry taking a chunk of flesh from Salazar's hand with him as he went, and smashing the young man into one of the machines in the lab, shattering the glass enclosure that formed part of it.

"Biting?" Salazar spat out in disbelief, "_That _is what you resort to? At least now I know that you're _desperate!_"

"The only rule in a fight to the death," Harry replied as he yanked himself out of the machine's remains, glaring at his foe, "Is that if it _works_, then _use it_."

"Oh, I quite agree," Salazar said with a sneer as he healed the torn flesh on his fingers, "It is simply that _some_ of us have no need to resort to such brutish tactics."

Harry finished extracting himself from the machine, but stared at the shattered pieces of it on the floor for a long moment, before planting his bare hands, his Dragonhide gauntlets having been lost somewhere during the course of the fight through the lab, against the floor and pushing himself to his feet before facing the Director of the Magus Order again.

"You say that you've sacrificed," Harry said harshly his gaze rising to meet his opponent's unflinchingly, "Tell me, what have you sacrificed _for?"_

Salazar, sensing impending victory in both the cessation of fire from Harry's heavy weapon, and the younger man's decision to start talking rather than just fight, was more than happy to both answer Harry's question, and close the distance to begin an offense of his own.

"For _power_, boy," He said, noting the way that Harry twitched irritably at the mode of address, "It's all that matters in this world, power over physical matter, power over energy, power over other beings, and ultimately, power over life itself."

"The only need for power as great as what either of us have already achieved," Harry said warily as he dropped his center of gravity, tensing as he prepared to reengage his opponent, "Is for fighting to stop scum like _you_."

Salazar _laughed_ at that, laughed so hard that he had to stop walking or lose his balance, scarcely managing to keep eye contact with Harry as his chest heaved with spasms of mirth.

"Y-you," He said, raising his flesh-and-blood hand to point at Harry's face, as his silvery replacement hand conjured another Rapier, "You actually believe that, don't you?"

Harry, part of him screaming to attack while his foe was at less than full capacity, part of him screaming to wait, that it was a trap of some form, simply nodded slowly.

"You know _nothing_ of power," Salazar abruptly snarled, his laughter dying harshly as he glared at Harry, "_Nothing_. You think that the power that _we_ have is formidable?"

Harry said nothing in response, slowly side-stepping out of the clutter of broken machine parts to improve his footing.

"You have _no idea_," Salazar said, snorting derisively as he turned slowly to keep tracking Harry, "Of what those who came before us accomplished with magic. Have you ever wondered _how_ after so many thousands of years, it is possible that magic is a secret now, how it is possible that even with the Americans and Russians filling the skies over Earth with their spy satellites, their spy planes, their intelligence agents running around throughout Europe in particular, and the world at large, how in spite of all of this, magic is still considered a myth by more than ninety percent of the world's inhabitants?"

Harry said nothing, slowly beginning to circle Salazar, raising clenched fists towards the man.

"Of course not," Salazar said dismissively, "It never _occurred_ to you to wonder, did it? Or to wonder why you and all your other holier-than-thou moralistic friends never found objection to Obliviators and the like regularly breaking into the minds of 'innocent' people, and wiping away memories they didn't think such people should have?"

Harry still said nothing, but an unpleasant feeling began to form in his gut, as the man's words began striking a disturbing chord with him.

"It's a magic beyond anything you could even comprehend," Salazar continued, tilting his head back to stare down his nose at Harry, "I have seen _one_ of the keystones that serves as a focal point to this effect, and no matter how hard I try, I can no longer even remember _where it was_. The focal point, for it was not truly crafted of stone, but some substance I have never seen the like of before, was _ten thousand years old_, and in a week of study, I could scarcely discern that it was but one of many, and its purpose was to _make people believe that magic had never existed_. I was called away by other affairs before I could study further, but some day I _will_ find that stone again, and when I unlock its secrets, who knows what _other_, _greater_ creations I will be able to find that the ancients have left behind?"

Harry continued to say nothing, simply waiting for his foe to move, buying time for Flamel and the others to defeat Salazar's Simulacra and come to aid him.

"Some day, I will find out," Salazar said with a shrug, "But I have wasted enough time regaling a dead man about the wonders of magic that he cannot-"

And Salazar struck, not wishing to give his opponent the benefit of a verbal cue that he was about to strike. It made no difference, Harry was at the bleeding edge of his combat focus, and young enough relative to Salazar that he had faster reflexes, and he seized Salazar's blade in his left hand, while bringing his right up towards the man's face. Salazar took a page out of Harry's own book, and rather than attempt to deflect the younger Wizard's fist, he laid his wand against Harry's temple and cast Fiendfyre.

A roaring inferno erupted against Harry's face, but he ignored it; he didn't feel the searing heat as more than uncomfortably warm through his barrier's protection, though he _did_ feel the instinctive magic rapidly begin to drain his already-depleted magical reserves as it shielded him against the intense heat. Harry focused on his own blow, or rather lack thereof, as he twisted his striking hand around, slowing his blow and opening it to come into gentle contact, palm-first, with the underside of the man's chin and the front of his neck.

"YOU KNOW _NOTHING_ OF SACRIFICE!" Harry screamed over the roaring flames that pressed against his brow, and then sent a surge of magical strength through his right arm, thrusting his palm, and the shard of Blue Tiberium he had lifted from the remains of the machine he had smashed into in it, into Salazar's flesh.

Salazar's defensive barrier, a multi-tiered thing that stopped most attacks before they even reached the surface of the skin, and lay within his flesh as well, shielding critical organs and systems from damage, was subverted. For the second time in a single day, something that had not happened for one hundred and fifty-seven years, Salazar's barrier was pierced, but the consequences this time were _permanent_. Harry poured his magic into the magic-devouring Crystal, nothing more than raw intent and _desire_ guiding it, and telling it to _grow_. The intent could not be fully realized as the Tiberium consumed the magic to foster its own growth and transmute the elements it came into contact with into more of itself, but what _could_ take effect only reinforced the voracious crystal's natural tendencies.

The Tiberium latched onto both the magic and the Iron, the Calcium, the Phosophorus, the Potassium, and dozens of different trace elements within Salazar's body, infesting his flesh and consuming what was to create more of itself. Salazar was not alone in feeling the Tiberium's bite, however, as the hungry crystal eroded the magic in Harry's barrier, and began insinuating itself into the flesh of his palm. Feeling the sting of physical pain that didn't originate from the chronic effects of the Cruciatus curse for the first time in years, Harry instinctively flinched away from his contact with both the Tiberium, and Salazar, who dropped to the floor, gagging as the Tiberium ate into his throat.

"What have you _done _to me?" Salazar half-demanded, half-gurgled as he thrashed on the rapidly-heating floor.

"I have made my _own_ sacrifice," Harry snarled down at the wounded master Wizard, "A sacrifice with _meaning_. I lay my life on the line, and even lay it _down_, to _protect those I Love!_"

Harry took a step back from Salazar, glancing around the lab as it burned, Salazar having lost control of his Fiendfyre, before looking down at his right hand, and the blue crystal imbedded in his palm. He seized it with the fingers of his left hand, and tried to yank it out, but only part of it tore loose, and Harry could feel the crystal trying to erode the barrier protecting his other hand, so he lay off further attempts to remove it for later.

"Accio Research notes," He said after another lock around the lab, gesturing aimlessly around him, too tired to bother performing the spell silently or motionlessly.

A dozen binders, one of them already on fire, and several computer towards came sailing his way, and he directed them into one of his expanded equipment pouches, before turning back towards Salazar, who was having a seizure as the Tiberium began to insinuate itself in his spinal cord.

"There's more to a man than magic, or _any_ form of power he wields," Harry said emphatically, looking down on the man in disgust, "You've spent your whole life in pursuit of power, now you're dying because of your magical power. Mum says I should Love my enemies, not hate them, but she's not some weak-hearted wuss who thinks that everybody can be convinced to stop being evil if they just have a good talking-to."

Harry paused for a moment, watching Salazar's face twisting into a rictus of agony as the lab burned around them. The man tried to draw another wand, but Harry kicked it out of his hand, breaking several of Salazar's fingers as he did so.

"I'd suggest you prepare yourself to meet your Maker," Harry said grimly, taking a deep breath before speaking again, "Because there's only one mercy I can think of to give you that won't make you a danger to the whole damn world all over again."

Harry waited for a few more seconds, staring down at the thrashing man below him, before silently firing an overpowered piercing spell into the man's skull, splattering his brains out onto the laboratory floor, and killing him instantly. He stood there, staring at the dead man's corpse, ignoring the Fiendfyre's flames, for a long, long minute as he thought over what had brought him to the place where he stood, over the corpse of _another_ man he had killed.

"I don't like it," He finally said to the empty lab, "But I'd do it again, to stop another one like you."

Then he turned, and walked out of the lab, leaving it, and the dead body within, to burn.

((()))

End Chapter 13.

((()))

AN: Special bonus for all of you; finally made it back to posting on Saturdays instead of Sundays; we'll see how long this keeps up...

Writing, especially for someone like me who's trying to make a living off of it, can be an arduous process, but sometimes, like when I wrote the last part of this chapter, you just get into the zone, and blow right on through it all, like I did with the second half of this chapter. Feels good, to finally have gotten through to the end of this tale, though there'll be quite a bit of wrap-up in the next chapter/epilogue.

Also, something my Beta noted, so I'll mention explicitly here: Harry was smashed into the isolation chamber for the Tiberium George and the others were studying; you'll note that I explicitly had his bare hands amongst the wreckage as he pushed himself to his feet afterwards. I wasn't explicit about him picking it up, or hiding it in his clenched fists, because I, as the author, am tricksy like that.

Finally, as to the ideology/Christian ethos thing in the last chapter:

Ideology has _consequences_. I will not apologize for, minimize, or act like my faith, or the faith of _others_, is irrelevant, and those of you of agnostic or atheist worldviews who got offended or disappointed that I decided to 'include' my worldview in this story, I have some news for you:

_It's been in this story all along_.

What defines a person's morality? What they think is right and wrong? Where do they get their ideas of human worth, of the purpose of human life? From their _religious beliefs_. A lot of atheists will try act like they are wholly rational people, and their belief that God does not exist is based on science (it isn't), but something that most of them refuse to recognize, is that _they are religious as well_. Specifically, their religious belief is that _there is no God_, and for almost all of them, _there is nothing beyond the natural world_. This informs their beliefs regarding human worth and value, morality, and the purpose as life, just as much as my belief in God does.

You will find stories all over the fanfiction (and published 'professional' fiction) world that both explicitly, and non-explicitly, promulgate their system of belief. One of the most common ideological axes that people grind, is the idea that there is 'nothing wrong' with homosexuality, that it's really 'no different' from heterosexuality, a belief largely informed by agnostic or atheistic worldviews. I'm a Christian, I believe that homosexuality is immoral; before anyone accuses me of being a bigot or a 'hater,' I'll inform the lot of you that I have had two homosexual friends over the years, both of them knew that I think homosexuality is wrong, and knew I think such because I'm a Christain, _but I wasn't a jerk to them about it_, and thus we could still be friends. Only one of them did the issue come up more than once or twice with, and that's because he and I both enjoyed debating our worldviews, and we did so in a _friendly_ and _respectful_ manner.

The point I am trying to make, is that _I am far from the only one out here trying to show what I believe_. And let me tell you, I didn't get _any_ negative reviews (if I got one or two they were so mild I've forgotten them) about Lily's talk with the Strike Team about how to handle the emotional fallout of killing. As she said, I will say again, _what she told them came directly from a Christian worldview._ She didn't lay the Christian foundation to that on them then, because she, like I do in real life, didn't want to hijack them into her worldview when they weren't in a sound state of mind, she wanted to help them reach a sound state of mind, _then_ logically and passionately present something she thinks they will be better for believing in.

Much like I am trying to do with this story. I know there are a _lot_ of people out there who claim Christ's name, but are, in essence, _haters_. They wield their 'righteousness' like a social club, to prove how much 'better' they are than everyone else. _That is not Christianity_. Christianity explicitly teaches _humility_, and in my experience, it's the only religion in the world that teaches _servant leadership_. I believe Confucius had some things to say about the subject as well, but despite what some people have tried to make out of him and his teachings, he was never trying to start a religion or the like.

I believe in a Gospel of Love, a message of good news for _all_ of the people of the world, and a creed that I earnestly believe will bring people to a truer understanding of the world, a more fulfilling and less painful life, and ultimately the absolutely most amazing life they could ever have. If you don't like that, if you want to stereotype me, or associate me in your mind with the haters out there who claim Christ's name, but are in fact nothing like him, that's your decision, and this story is quite literally free, and not forced upon you.

In the end, I know that what I have to say will repulse some people, but that's to be expected. When you deal with thousands and millions of people, _anything_ of deep meaning worth saying will repulse some people, because until the end of the world comes, there will _always_ be people out there who hate the Truth.


	15. Chapter 14 & Epilogue

Hero Harry Chapter Fourteen.

((()))

AN: _All_ readers will want to read the end AN, as some plot-threads will not be dealt with in this final chapter.

((()))

_Granger Lab, Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, May 6th, 1997_.

"Salazar is dead?" Flamel asked as he met Harry at the top of the stairs between the second and third floors of the Lab.

Harry nodded, then tilted his head back towards the burning laboratory.

"I'll be going to recover the body," Flamel said with a grim nod, "With men like him, there's no such thing as being too certain. His Simulacra dissipated, meaning he's almost certainly gone, but as I said, no such thing as _too_ certain."

Flamel passed Harry swiftly, entering the burning lab, which didn't burn for long after the Alchemist entered it. Harry paid the man minimal attention, instead staring at the patch of blue crystal imbedded in his arm for a long moment, before removing the gun-pouch from his combat harness, fiddling with it for a moment, then placing it on the floor.

"Harry!" Hermione shouted as she burst out of the pouch's suddenly-expanded aperture, "Your _hand!_"

The bushy-haired young woman first seized Harry in a tight hug, then grabbed his wrist, and twisted it around so that she could inspect the lump of Tiberium imbedded in his palm.

"Oh," She said worriedly as she inspected its edges, "This is _not_ good."

"Idiot didn't read any of the papers on Tiberium, did he?" Tabane said sharply as she hauled herself out of the enclosed space, _Seras_, to Harry's considerable surprise, coming out behind her.

"I just asked Hermione for the summary," Harry said a little tightly, "She said it was caustic to any living being, and skin contact should be avoided if at all possible."

"It's not just _caustic,_" Hermione said, her worry increasing dramatically as she spotted thin shards of blue radiating out into Harry's skin from the initial site of contamination, "It's _parasitic._"

"The way you say that implied that this is a lot worse than tapeworm," Harry said cautiously, "How so?"

"It could _eat you_," Hermione said flatly, "Now lower your barrier, and _hold still_."

Ever-cautious, Harry briefly glanced up and down the hallway they stood in, as well as down the stairs, then studied Tabane for a long moment, before nodding sharply to Hermione.

Hermione drew her wand, worked it through a complex sequence, then spoke a simple incantation; '_Tempus Stature._'

"How does your arm feel?" She asked worriedly.

"No different," Harry said, flexing his fingers experimentally, "That was supposed to be a Stasis Charm, right?"

"Yes," Hermione said, her face slowly paling, "And I _know_ that I performed it perfectly. This is _very bad_."

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, May 6th, 1997._

Shortly after the remaining Simulacra faded, Gray Horse ordered his men to bring the wounded into the clearing around Granger Lab; between what few lights on the structure were still working, and the fire consuming one of the third-floor labs, it had easily the best illumination, not to mention clear and level ground, immediately available. Their attempts to move the injured ran into immediate problems, however; aside from a handful of those who had survived the combat, none of them could get any form of levitation charm to work.

"This," Draco said quietly as he eyed his wand, "Is very bad."

"It's _weird_," Daphne Greengrass replied harshly, projecting anger deliberately to cover for her grief and fear, "I've never heard of mass spell-failure like this before."

The Hogwarts Exiles, like most of the American soldiers, stood in the clearing around Granger Lab, attention torn between the spell failures, Tom and Ginny cuddling (some said the grin on her face had more to do with the flustered American than all the pain-killing potions she was doped up on), and keeping an eye on the Lab itself, watching for Flamel or Harry to appear.

"I have," Luna Lovegood said sadly as she ran through a series of silent spells, almost all of them failing, "Though I'd thought it only legend. When the last of the Pharoahs died, the Egyptian school of ritual magic rather suddenly stopped working. 'Very bad' scarcely begins to describe this, I think."

"So either Salazar or Flamel died," Neville said grimly, "Let's hope it wasn't Flamel."

Draco opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the spectral form of Lily Potter streaking out of the woods into their midst.

It put something of a damper on conversation.

"Where is Harry?" The specter demanded of the students and soldiers looking around.

Part of Draco Malfoy's mind opened his mouth, trying to respond, but the larger part was caught up with 'ghosts aren't supposed to have red hair,' and 'if it has no physical mass, how can it speak?' A thought that his fairly recent self-education regarding muggle sciences had brought to him; also a thought he shared with George Granger.

Fortunately, Hermione Granger's arrival on the scene, dragging Harry out of the lab by the wrist, answered Lily's question for them.

"Harry," Lily said sharply, floating over towards the pair, moving to cut off the dawning horror she saw in Harry's eyes, "I need you and Hermione both to bleed, then mix your blood, _now_."

Harry moved without hesitation, seizing a knife from his combat harness and slashing lightly across the back of his forearm, before passing the knife to Hermione, then cupping his hand under the cut, allowing blood to slowly pool within. Hermione, more than a little bewildered, glanced back and forth between the Lily's spectre, and Harry's bleeding arm, before mimicking his cut, albeit more carefully and cutting more lightly, then allowing a drop of blood to fall off of the knife-blade and into the blood on Harry's hand.

Neither Harry nor Hermione had been in any kind of condition to properly take in what had happened during Lily's rebirth at Little Hangleton two years prior, but Harry at least had seen it, even if it _was_ through the haze of Cruciatus-induced pain.

Lily's second rebirth was _drastically_ different from her first. Crimson blood, flecked with blue, erupted from where Harry and Hermione's blood came into contact, twisting outward and taking form around the shade of Lily Potter. First to form was a roughly cylindrical column, with what was rapidly recognizable as a spinal column, formed from blue crystal, coalescing from the top and bottom of it, blood continued to flow, supernaturally created quantities of it rapidly filling in the flesh around the spine, organs, muscles, tendons, and connective tissues forming. A skull began to materialize, flecks of blue within the tide of red fusing together, as a pelvic structure, rib cage, and scapula began to form. As the organs of Lily's torso and abdomen began to reach completion, the synthesis of flesh accelerated as it moved on to less-complex tissues.

Skeletal arms and legs formed, and flesh began to creep up over the bare skull, while muscle sheathed the now-completed rib cage, and Harry superimposed himself, and his cloak, between the coalescing body and the gawking onlookers. Lily's bone structure finished forming, and as tendons and muscles began to run down her legs and arms, eyes formed in their sockets, her tongue formed, and her chest and genitals grew into place, skin sliding into place across her torso and abdomen, followed rapidly by her head and face.

Within a few more seconds, Lily's bare feet rested lightly on the damp grass, and she took Harry's cloak to wrap around herself. As Harry stepped back and turned around, allowing both himself and others a clear view of his mother's new body, it was _very_ clear that her third body was radically different form both her first and second. The most blatantly obvious were her finger and toenails, which were formed of brilliant blue Tiberium, while her skin in certain places, specifically where bones were directly beneath its surface, had taken on a faint bluish tinge.

"Well," Lily said matter-of-factly as she looked down at her hands, "That was different."

That said, she stepped closer to Harry, and pulled his right hand up into clear view, revealing the shard of Tiberium imbedded within.

"I think we can assume, given this new form of mine," She said thoughtfully, "That the Tiberium has made its way into your bloodstream, which given its drastic effect on me, is _bad_."

"Mixed blessing," George Granger said, causing _everyone_ within ten feet to start violently, Harry nearly stabbing the man in the chest with one of his knives, "It's Blue Tiberium, that stuff's growth rate without magic fueling it is positively _anemic, _especially in comparison to the green stuff."

"How did you _do_ that?" Harry demanded harshly, trembling with tension as he re-sheathed his knife, "And in case you didn't notice, I'm now quite possibly the second-most magical person in the world."

"I wasn't always a scientist," George said, waving a hand dismissively as he stepped up to examine Harry's infested hand himself, "Now that we've got a diagnosis, it's time to move on to treatment. Lily, you've been working with magic rune thingummies regarding-"

"Power drain?" Lily cut in sharply, opening her hand and gesturing for Harry to hand her his knife, "Yes, I have. Good thinking George; this shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. Hermione, get over here."

Hermione, who'd only been a few feet away, immediately approached, and when Lily gestured, extended her arm.

"What happ-" Lily began when she saw that Hermione's arm was unblemished, "Right, the Stone. This is going to feel weird and hurt a little, Hermione, and Harry, this will likely hurt a great deal, but you know I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was in your best interest."

"I trust you," Harry said, his voice only wavering slightly as he spoke, "Do it."

Lily looked to Hermione, who nodded, if a bit fearfully, then grimaced, then began to carve runes into the back of her son's arm, cutting as lightly as she felt she could risk without interfering with the runes formation. It was, indeed, the work of only a few minutes, as Lily worked a handful of runes she was exceedingly (_mind-numbingly_ she'd sometimes felt) familiar with into Harry's skin, then pulled Hermione around and revealed the pseudo-tattoo on the back of her shoulder where her copy of Lily's incomplete defensive array had been placed. She added a single bloody rune to the array, which visibly healed in front of her eyes, barely giving her time to complete the rune before the first cut closed.

"Harry," She said sharply, "Pump _all_ of your power, _every single bit of it_, into that array."

Harry, who had felt the array begin to pull on his already-drained reserves, did as she said immediately, pumping every erg of magical power he had into the set of Runes, which rapidly began to suck on his power in return, squeezing him dry of magical energy in seconds. The experience left him woozy, magical fatigue and physical fatigue were not the same thing, but neither were they completely unrelated, and Harry had lived with his body super-saturated with magic for nearly five years by that point.

"Is it sucking you dry?" Lily asked more gently, wrapping an arm around his shoulder as she noticed his disorientation.

"Yeah," Harry said somewhat breathlessly, "I don't like it."

"I don't think I would either," Lily said, relief clear in her voice, "But it'll give us time to look for a more permanent treatment."

She paused for a moment, then suddenly yanked Harry into a full-body hug, shocking both him, and most of the onlookers, especially those at an angle to see tears beginning to form in her eyes.

"I could feel it," She said, her voice wrought with pain, "All the way from Virginia. I could _feel it_ when you were hit with the Killing Curse, and I came as fast as I could. I'm sorry it wasn't fast enough."

Harry was lost for words; he knew his mother cared for him, she had made that abundantly clear over the two years since she had re-entered his life, but he didn't know how to handle such raw displays of emotion. Especially after the fight he had just had, and the emotional highs and lows that had come with it. Hermione, ever determined to help Harry further out of his shell, took a firm hold of Harry's hands, and manually wrapped his arms around his mother, initiating a return hug on his behalf, which he slowly made his own, holding the taller woman gently.

Hermione then turned her attention towards the onlookers, chest swelling up as she took a deep breath in preparation for telling the other Hogwarts Exiles, Tom, and a few of the soldiers off for not minding their own business, but one look at her stormy expression made her point to the lot of them without a single word being said.

"Hermione," Draco called, intentionally attempting to distract her, "I do believe it would be best if we had words about how our spells have been acting up since the fight ended."

Giving the onlookers another glare for good measure, Hermione allowed herself to be distracted.

((()))

_Azkaban Island, British Territorial Waters, May, 1997._

The fortress of Azkaban, based on the island of the same name was, simply put, a ruin. It _had_ been the most hardened magical fortification in the British Isles a week earlier, its triple-ringed format, heavy wards, and Dementor Guards making it a supposedly-impregnable fortress, with only one (not publicly announced) escape ever having been managed from within it. Its wards, charged from the leyline that the prison rested on over the course of centuries, had prevented all known magical means of transportation on and off of the island, as well as imbuing its stony walls with a nigh-insurmountable resistance to any and all forms of magic.

Now, its outer ring had a massive hole through it, a twenty-foot wide section reduced to rubble, which, once the Dementors had been neutralized by the attacking force, had served as the insertion-point for taking the ring. Grenades enchanted to resist vanishing, banishing, and other methods of disposal, then strapped to modified Bludgers, had led the assault into the ring, and slain most of the prison's defenders before the attackers had simply run out of them.

Once the outer ring was secured, a pair of M1 75mm Pack Howitzers, purchased by the British from American manufacturers during WWII and eventually surplussed out of military service in the ensuing decades, were assembled in a clear field on the island outside of the ring, and the attacking force began to educate themselves in the operation of light artillery. Many mistakes were made during the learning process, but the attacking force outnumbered the defenders better than two to one, and unlike the attackers, the defenders had no powerful non-magical explosives or other means by which to force their way out through the outer ring. After five days of practice, both gun crews managed to achieve a reasonable rate of fire, three rounds per minute, and the bombardment began in earnest, gradually reducing the _entire_ middle ring to rubble, then pounding the rubble into debris, just because the gun crews _could_.

After only a single hour of bombardment on the prison's inner ring, the guards surrendered, offering up their prisoners in exchange for their own lives.

On the whole, as he looked out over the ruined prison fortress, Lucius Malfoy decided that it was the most successful non-financial endeavor he had ever engaged in, even if it had cost him two million Galleons for all the mercenaries he'd had to hire. Still, it had secured the release of those who remained loyal to him for _non-_monetary reasons, and sent a statement to every remaining figure of power or influence in the entire United Kingdom.

_A message_, Lucius silently decided as he studied the remnants of the abandoned fortress, _That should be taken to its logical extreme._

"Level the place," He ordered, turning to the commander of his mercenary forces, "I don't want a single stone left standing atop another, even if I have to spend another million pounds on the ammunition and explosives to finish the job."

People would _know_ what happened when a Malfoy went to war.

((()))

_Lake Sakakawea Magical Asylum Refuge, May 6th, 1997._

"_This_ would be why so many of your spells are not working," Flamel announced as he approached the small group that had formed around Draco and Hermione, discussing the apparent mass-failure of magic.

The group included most of the healthy remnants of Harry's classmates who had taken part in the fight, as well as Captain Gray Horse, George Granger, Paul Wright, and Minerva McGonagall. Not much had been learned, aside from a growing list of which spells _didn't_ work, and they were more than happy to see the Alchemist, though what he carried was more than a little disturbing.

Burned and battered, the dead body of 'Salazar' floated along in the air behind Flamel, who deftly drifted it down into the middle of the circle around Hermione and Draco. He then proceeded to roll the cadaver onto its belly, a swift illusion blurring out the bloody ruin of the back of Salazar's head, and gestured towards the back.

"Look _closely_ at the skin on his back," Flamel said, "I think those of you with enchanting or spell-crafting experience will find it to be quite interesting."

Hermione immediately leaned forward, her curiosity overcoming her natural aversion to being close to a human corpse; Draco wasn't far behind, and George Granger nearly knocked Paul Wright over in his rush to examine the body himself.

"This has to be the finest set of runes I've ever seen," Hermione said after a few moments study, "At least in such quantity. It looks like runic definitions of spells?"

"Yes," Flamel said, "I knew that Salazar had tied himself to 'Wizard' magic, but I hadn't suspected he'd done something quite like _this_."

"I'm not too proud to admit I haven't figured this out yet," Draco said, leaning back from the body to look up at Flamel, "What 'this' did he do?"

"In essence," Flamel said evenly, "He engraved the entire library of official 'Wizard' spells into his flesh. Have you ever tried to create a new spell, Malfoy?"

"Can't say I have," Malfoy said, shaking his head, "The thought has crossed my mind, but I've always had more pressing affairs at hand."

"Well," Flamel said evenly, "As any competent spell-crafter or spell-researcher can tell you, in order to adequately understand, or to craft, a spell, one must first understand the effects of one's magic on the natural world. It is possible to cause nearly _any_ effect with magic, but unless an individual _understands_ what they are doing, most of their magic will be wasted as it does 'flashy' things, create light, rattle the windows, etc, etc. When one understands what they desire their magic to do, they will much better be able to control the flow of their magic, and waste less in the process. What a 'spell' does, is shape the magic _for_ you, without the _need_ to understand just what natural processes you are altering, nullifying, or amplifying."

"But there isn't any particular association between a given gesture, and the effect it creates," Hermione said sickly as she looked up from the body, "They've all always just been a random chain for gestures, and the Latin arguably could only be associated because of the intrinsic meaning involved in language. But this," She gestured down towards Salazar's corpse, "If I'm reading these runes right, these are interlinked to the casting of spells, which means... I'm not sure _what_ it means."

"It means that whenever a Witch or Wizard cast a spell, unless they _properly_ understood the effects they were creating," Flamel said grimly, "They were relying upon _his_ knowledge to make the spell more efficiently, with the gestures and incantation serving to evoke his knowledge, in exchange for passing a portion of the magical energy that the caster utilized on to Salazar."

"...That would rather handily explain why he always had so much magical stamina," Draco said wryly, "He was cheating."

"Cheating _brilliantly_ at that," George said, a faint hint of respect in his voice, "The man was an absolute bastard, but in order to actually accumulate _that much knowledge_... I think I'm jealous!"

Marie smacked him over the back of the head.

"He's _dead_ you imbecile," She said shortly, "All his brainmeats, as brilliant as they may have been, spread across..."

"I killed him in the Materials Engineering lab," Harry cut in, him and Lily approaching from where they'd enjoyed a brief moment of privacy, Lily's arm wrapped around his shoulder.

"Right!" Marie declared as she seized George by his collar, "You have _no_ reason to be jealous of such a man, doubtless the only reason he was able to accumulate so much knowledge was his longevity, which I supremely doubt comes from ethical sources."

"Annual ritual sacrifice of a virgin," Flamel supplied grimly, "Reinforcing his own youth and vitality by stealing theirs. Also the reason we _very_ rarely went a year without at least one fight, and a number of dead minions on his part."

"There you have it," Marie said with a decisive nod, "I've little doubt that you are far more intelligent than he."

"If nothing else," Flamel said as he began moving towards where the bodies of the dead and wounded lay, "You are _wiser_. Now if you will please excuse me, I need to tend to the wounded before the golden hour has lapsed."

"And I need to go give the all-clear, so we can start bringing the camp's inhabitants back," Paul Wright said, nodding respectfully towards the group at large, before turning and leaving.

"Right," Hermione said decisively, standing from where she'd been inspecting Salazar's body, then turning and stalking towards Harry, "Get over here, Harry."

Harry, feeling an odd sort of nervousness he didn't really know what to make of, cautiously stepped forward, Lily readily allowing him out of her embrace, hiding a smile with one hand.

"I am officially declaring you to be on medical leave," Hermione said somewhat grouchily, before seizing Harry by the shoulders and planting a fierce kiss directly on his mouth.

Harry almost fell over from shock, reflexively grabbing Hermione in return as his legs tried to give out beneath him; Hermione didn't release him for several _long_ moments.

"We both know you're no helpless lump without your magic," Hermione said when she pulled back, somewhat breathlessly, "But you're not going and fighting _anywhere _until we've got a handle on this Tiberium thing. And you're _not_ leaving me and going off on your own again!"

Hoots, whistles, and a few raucous cheers sounded from the English and American onlookers, while Harry blushed for the first time any of them could ever remember seeing.

((()))

Parvati Patil wept openly as the Alchemist gently used a specialized swabby-thing she didn't really understand to spread the Elixir of Life across her twin sister's face. Watching the legendary Elixir work was somewhat horrific in and of itself, but after a little over twenty seconds, rather than a scorched ruin of bone, ash, and blood, Padma had eyes, a nose, lips, cheeks, and it was all _healthy._ Parvati seized the unconscious Ravenclaw and began crying into the girl's cloak, as Flamel smiled, then stood and moved on to his next patient.

There was nothing he could do for Blaise Zabini, as the boy's head had been removed altogether, not to mention reduced to the consistency of chunky salsa (Flamel _rarely_ could stomach Mexican), but most of the American soldiers had been downed by Enforcers, not Salazar himself, and Flamel was able to revive most of them, leaving only six more-thoroughly destroyed men beyond his care. Captain Gray Horse was... _effusive_ in his thanks.

Neville Longbottom's broken legs were treated with a potion after an attempt to use a spell failed, Draco Malfoy declined the offer to regrow his missing eyebrows and hair with dry humor, which left only the issue of Ginevra Weasley's lost limbs, which was somewhat more complicated.

"If Salazar's spell... matrix? Engine? I'm not entirely sure what to call it," Flamel informed Ginevra gravely, "Had not been destroyed, I could have spelled the curse-magic out of your wounds and treated them immediately. Unfortunately, as it is, curse-removal is not a field I'm sufficiently familiar with to be able to perform such magic now that the spell-locus has been undone."

"Sir," Tom said as he held the potioned-up (and more than a little loopy) Ginny carefully in his lap, "I thought that the Elixir of Life was... a bit more _potent_ than that?"

"Oh it is," Flamel said with a bittersweet smile, "I could neutralize the curse simply by application of the Elixir, but that would take quite a bit more of the Elixir than it would to simply restore her limbs, and quite frankly, I will save between one and three lives by _not_ treating her in such a way."

Tom, and most of the others within earshot of Flamel, were shocked by his words.

"I know it may come as a surprise," Flamel said wryly, "But the ability of the Stone to produce the Elixir of Life, unlike its ability to produce Gold, is quite limited. I am an _exceedingly_ skilled doctor, and travel the world as a specialist, treating worst-case scenarios via magic on the sly. When both my magical and mundane skills as a healer fail to treat a case, I simply cheat with the Elixir. Miss Weasley's life is in no danger from her wounds, as grievous as they are, and I know that at some point, someone will re-discover the means by which to remove the curse magic. Once that has been accomplished, I'll be happy to use the Elixir to restore her limbs," Flamel turned his attention to a half-hidden figure looking on from the edge of the crowd of (formerly) wounded, "And the same is true for you, Miss Tabane. If you'd spoken with me before the Salazar's death, I could have attempted the same for you then."

Tabane retreated the rest of the way behind the tree she was peaking out from behind, and said nothing. Further discussion was cut off by the arrival of Molly Weasley.

((()))

"I do not believe, Mister Potter," McGonagall said with a sad smile, "That we have spoken for some time. How have you been?"

"...Busy?" Harry said somewhat hesitantly, _not_ having expected the question.

Harry, along with those of his 'team' that had not stayed with the wounded, had taken a seat on the grass (Hermione very nearly sitting _on_ Harry, her head resting on his shoulder), and were more or less just resting while they waited for daybreak; Luna Lovegood had even fallen asleep, her head in Lily's lap.

"I cannot say that surprises me," McGonagall said, suppressing the urge to try to conjure a chair, before gracefully seating herself on the grass in front of Harry, "Now please _really_ tell me just how you have been, and _what_ you have been doing, for the last year."

It only took one pointed jab at Harry's ribs from Hermione to get him talking, and once he did, Harry found it oddly liberating to give an account of his activities since they had fled Hogwarts. McGonagall _was_ rather startled when he told her (upon request) just what he kept in his 'basic' safehouses. It also gave him some perspective on just how strange it was to keep quantities of Gold measured in multiple tons as 'standard provisions.'

"I _did_ possess a Philosopher's Stone for several years," Harry explained, "I have stockpiled a reasonable amount of Gold."

Harry left unstated that what he considered a 'reasonable' amount of Gold was enough to throw the world's Gold markets into complete chaos.

"Well," McGonagall said with a subtly amused expression, "I don't suppose that I'd be able to us a financial incentive to convince you to take a position as my new defense professor then, would I?"

"Headmistress McGonagall," Harry said, rather startled by the offer, "My magic has just been more or less crippled for the foreseeable future."

"Harry," McGonagall said gently, "I do not _care_ if your magic is currently unusable. What you taught your friends over the last year and a half is nothing short of _remarkable_, and I would rest _much_ easier if knew that all my students were _half_ so capable of defending themselves. It is your _mentality_, your _discipline_, and most of all your _drive_ that made you such an effective teacher, not your powerful magic, though that certainly didn't hurt."

Harry thought silently about McGonagall's words, before Molly Weasley interrupted any attempt on his part to reply.

"HARRY JAMES POTTER!" The Weasley matriarch bellowed as she stormed over from where the wounded lay, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY DAUGHTER?"

Harry glanced at Hermione, who shrugged, then at the other Hogwarts exiles, who shrugged, then at the American soldiers who were nearby, who _grinned _and shrugged. Sighing, Harry rolled his eyes, and pulled himself to his feet.

"You know," He said thoughtfully as Molly approached, "I haven't felt the touch of the Cruciatus on my body since just after the Tiberium got into me."

Hermione's eyes widened at Harry's words, but the Weasley's arrival preempted anything she may have had to say.

"_Harry James Potter_," Molly growled, glaring down at the slightly-shorter young man, "_What did you get Ginny into?_"

"Nothing," Harry said flatly, turning a glare on Molly so harsh that she instinctively stepped back a pace."

"Nothing?" Molly said, half-confused for a moment, before shaking off her shock at Harry's glare, "_Nothing?_" She continued in a shriek, "If you did _nothing_, then why _is she missing an arm and a leg?_"

"I didn't _DO_ nothing," Harry shouted back, storming right up to the woman with fire in his eyes, "I didn't _GET_ her into _ANYTHING_. I taught her how to fight, _she_ chose what to do with that."

"You've been leading her astray ever since she was twelve years old!" Molly shouted back, completely ignoring Harry's words, "And now you've cost her half her limbs!"

"_Bullshit_," Harry snarled, "I argued for _months_ that none of them should have come to fight with me-"

He was cut off by Molly slapping him forcefully across the cheek.

"YOU LIA-urk" Molly began, but never finished.

Harry had made a decision almost ten years earlier, to _never_ take an attack on his person lying down again, and responded to Molly's slap in the exact same way he would have responded to an assault from anyone else; with _force_. Before Molly had even realized Harry had begun to move, his left hand was wrapped around her throat, while his left foot hooked her knees, and he pushed forward, slamming her back down onto the ground.

_Hard._

"_Nobody_ controls your daughter," Harry growled, glaring directly into the stunned woman's eyes with furious intensity, "_She_ makes her own decisions. _She_ chose to learn how to fight, _she _chose to join the attack on Fudge's camp in Wales, _she_ chose to stay and fight here, and sacrifice herself to protect the lives of others. _She_ made all those choices, and when you try to blame _me_ for what _she_ chose to do, you _SPIT ON HER SACRIFICE!"_

The last came out in an enraged scream, and for a long moment, Harry simply glared down at the now-terrified Weasley matriarch, grappling with his fury.

"Ginevra Weasley is the very _best_ sort of friend," Harry half-shouted, removing his hand from Molly's throat and standing back up, "_All_ of those who came and fought here today are. Salazar was only coming for one of us, but every one of these people, British, American, _wherever_ they came from, didn't even have to be _asked_ to fight on behalf of others. They just _did_."

Harry turned, facing those who stood around him, which now included those who had been wounded (as well as some who had been clinically dead), and Flamel himself, looking from one face to the next. In the crowd he saw each of his friends from Hogwarts, save the dead Blaise Zabini, he saw McGonagall and Paul Wright, he saw Tabane and Seras, he saw a whole pack of disciplined, determined soldiers that had earned his respect even if he didn't even know their names. In that moment, he saw men and women of honor.

"Two years ago, Hermione and my mother earned my trust by fighting alongside me against Tom Riddle and his thugs," Harry said, "I know that I have a hard time trusting people after how I grew up but you," Harry pointed first to Ginny, then swept his arms around to encompass all of those who stood around him, "All of you have fought alongside me, each in your own way, as you are able, including some of you I'd never met before," Harry nodded towards a cluster of the American soldiers, "You've earned my trust, my respect, and my honor."

Harry nodded sharply, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before speaking one more time.

"Now, you are all my brothers in battle, and for the first time in my life, I feel honored to serve alongside someone else, and would trust you all to fight at my side again."

((()))

The End, of Hero Harry.

((()))

AN: In the first story, Harry sets out down the path of a Hero, in this story, Harry learns something that every Hero who wants to endure must learn; he learns how to _trust_ others. Forming healthy, supportive relationships, was supposed to be one of the main themes of this story from the start.

Things didn't quite work out the way I wanted them to with that. Shortly before I started writing this story, a number of personal relationships in my life fell to pieces; this did _no_ favors for my ability to write a story about the intended theme, and updates both faded to a monthly, instead of weekly, schedule, and the plot became somewhat fractured and fragmented in the earlier stages of the story. At some point, I hope to come back and improve the coherency of the earlier parts of this story, but that's a long ways away, if it ever comes at all. Last week, on the Sunday I intended to finish this chapter and post it, I ran into another betrayal of trust from someone; fortunately, I've learned how to overcome personal betrayals a lot more easily, and the last portion of this story was only delayed a week, instead of months.

Now, as to what comes next...

The story of Brutal Harry, and the world he lives in, is only just beginning. For those of you who read my other work, yes, the event referred to in prior chapters is the catastrophe that drives the primary plot of War in Tokyo. Yes, that means that the two stories take place in the same world, and yes, that means that somewhere down the road, the various characters will be interacting with each other. How and when, is a seeeeeecret.

In the meantime, I will state flat-out that part of why I had the Harry Potter magic system linked to a locus controlled by Salazar, was because I _needed_ that locus destroyed. Harry Potter magic is simply pants-on-head retardedly broken. Trying to write stories with the full form of it over extended durations becomes simply impossible, because there's only _one_ limit on Harry Potter magic, and that limit is that it can't bring back the dead. It can literally do _anything_ else.

You may have noticed, that over the course of this and Brutal Harry, I never really did anything with magical portraits. Why? Because the conceptual underpinnings of self-aware paintings, possibly as reflections or even _copies_ of dead people, is pretty damn horrifying when you think about it. How the hell do they work? Are they simply clever 'AI' that mimic people? Are they legitimately living? Are they echoes, or trapped reflections of human souls?

It's just too much of a mess for me as a writer to want to deal with, and the system as a whole had to go, so now it's out, clearing the way for better stories in the future.

Speaking of better stories, I'm going to announce right here and now, at least two independent sequels to this story:

What happened to Tonks? I'm sure _some_ of you remember the way she left the story, in rather dire condition. Well, I've got _plans_ for her, and that story is something I've been looking forward to writing for more than a year.

Harry and Hermione dealing with being on 'medical leave' and not having magic, as well as the Tiberium infection he's suffering from. I'll be blunt, this is going to be my first-ever attempt to write an out-and-out romance, so it'll probably be wonderfully horrible. I've certainly involved romantic themes in my writing before, but this is going to be the first time I try to write a story where romance is the primary focus. I'm a guy, and I'm _weird_, so readers can expect this to _not_ be like most HP romance stories out there, possibly not like any. A particular notice to expect _strong_ Christian themes in this story; I don't know how to write a romance outside of a Godly definition of Love (I scarcely know how to write a romance _with_ one), and I'm not going to try. Also, as they're both incredible nerds (Hermione academics, Harry military), expect adorkableness if I can manage it.

Both of these stories will be at least six months away; I have to spend some time on my original work, as I have little to no money, and I need to earn some income to replace things like damaged speakers, heat-sinks on my computer (my CPU heat-sink is un-mounted, I have to lay my computer on my side to let gravity hold it in place), and other things. I may also put together a compendium of short stories dealing with the life and times of other assorted characters; Luna, Draco (who has a novel-length story of his own planned for some years down the road), Neville, Susan, etc, etc. I'm a writer, it's what I do, and I intend to get a lot of mileage out of it.

Finally, for those of you wondering what my next fanfiction projects are, I'm rebooting The Warp is Calm (current chapter 70% complete, will be posted on SB when finished, here the weekend after that), and finishing War in Tokyo. Don't know when WiT will see an update, as I'll be focusing on my original work again, but hopefully it'll be soon.

((()))

Epilogue:

((()))

_Unplottable location, 'Neutral Ground,' June, 1997._

"Ah, Mister Potter," Lucius greeted amiably as he entered the small, spartan room occupied only by a table with two chairs on opposite sides of it, "It's good to see you again."

"Lucius," Harry greeted from his seat in one of the chairs with a cautious nod, "I am rather curious as to why you wished to see me. I was under the impression that the war in England was over."

"Oh, it is," Lucius said with a nod as he seated himself with casual grace, "It was pretty much over after Moody cleaned out the Ministry, and you took out Fudge's internment camp. Cleaning out Azkaban just made that _clear_ to everyone, and allowed me to recover my loyal subordinates."

"I am rather surprised they did not ask you to take up rulership after that," Harry said, "Or that Moody didn't try to seize it."

"Harry," Malfoy said, affecting a slight air of offense, "Over the last two years the vast majority of Magical England's sixty thousand inhabitants have sat by and done _nothing_ while their fellow citizens were systematically persecuted, abused, killed, raped, and dehumanized, because they couldn't get off of their arses to do anything more than tut over it as they read their morning newspaper, far too apathetic to actually wish to enact change themselves, far too apathetic to want to actually _do_ anything. What do you _think_ I told them when they asked me to form a new Ministry?"

Harry just sat there and stared at Malfoy expressionlessly.

"I said _No_ of course," Lucius said with a snort, "I have no use for a bunch of mindless minions. Even if I was still interested in that kind of power, Tom tried to build an empire with dunderheads like that, and we all saw where that got _him_. I've _no_ interest in trying to run their nation for them, _especially_ now that most of the spells that they were wholly dependent upon for their lifestyle have now failed them. Far more trouble than they're worth."

"Understandable," Harry eventually replied, "That still does not tell me what you wished to see me about today."

"Just dropping off a few presents for you, really," Malfoy said with a pleasant smile, "I thought you'd appreciate these."

Malfoy pulled a small sack from his belt, and emptied it onto the table. Out of the sack fell a ring with a cracked stone upon it, a trashed diary (one that Harry recognized from his second year at Hogwarts), an ornate goblet with a tarnished golden hole stuck through it, an amulet that looked to have been sliced in half, and an antique diadem that had _also_ been cut in half.

"With the Horcrux your mother pulled from your scar at Little Hangleton," Malfoy said with a smile, "That should be the entire set. I do so _hate_ leaving loose ends untied, don't you?"

Harry simply nodded slowly, a small smile of its own appearing on his face.

((()))

AN: Riddle never made Nagini a Horcrux in this timeline, so yes, that _is_ the complete set.

Final note:

Jumble Paratroopers Splat!


End file.
